


The Allurement

by Iliketowritesometimes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Turned Into Vampire, Child Abuse, Hand Jobs, M/M, Male Slash, Oral Sex, Sexual Content, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 42,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iliketowritesometimes/pseuds/Iliketowritesometimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Afraid his uncle was going to hurt him, Harry runs away to Diagon Alley to stay there for the remainder of the Summer. Little does he know that one simple burst of accidental magic and one late night stroll will have changed everything he's ever known and everything he's ever been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this   
> Warnings: Vampire!OC/ Harry Potter (Male/Male), Ideologically sensitive themes, swearing (mostly minor), sexual themes and acts, mentions of physical & emotional abuse 
> 
> IMPORTANT NOTE: This work is hosted on FF(net) under a different penname ("whats up with jeremiah"). It is my original content/ work and is thereby not plagiarized. Little changes have been made from the original work. 
> 
> \- Reviews are encouraged and welcome! Flames are welcome, but not encouraged. :)

Harry didn't know which was worse: the perpetually dry condition of his hands from all the scrubbing or the constant layer of sweat on his skin from the heat. On one hand, the dry soap that had been neglected to be rinsed off chaffed on his palms but, on the other, the sweat provided an unrivaled greasiness that made his scalp crawl.

Both had their merits yet, at the moment, arteries swelling and skin blistering and head broiling under the torrid heat of the sun, the only thing he could think of was how much he hated Aunt Petunia's garden. Her stupid garden. With stupid begonias. And equally stupid avens, marigolds, sunflowers, and thorny roses. All sweltering and stewing like fried fish. Not unlike himself, dressed awkwardly in a long sleeve shirt that stuck to his back and bent over the ruddy  _flowers_.

Yes, the sweat was most definitely worse. At least when he scrubbed the dishes he could take quick swigs from a sink brimming with gloriously cold water. Cold water: a phrase which was both foreign to him, the hose, and the watering can.

Hot sun and grubby soil and stubborn weeds were, nevertheless, intimately familiar. Along with hot, undrinkable water.

It was times like these when the only thought that rebounded in his head was,  _I can't wait for school to start_.

A thick voice with the consistency of mustard rang in his ears, "Boy!"

Harry turned his head with a dazed look, rubbing at his brow and guarding his eyes from the sun.

Vernon, who looked as plump and sausage-like as ever, glowered at him and tightened his tie until it receded under his chin, "I am going to gone until later this evening, now, I don't want any funny business to occur while I'm gone, if you give Dudley or Petunia any trouble-"

"There will be consequences, I know," the boy recited, shoulders drooping as he rubbed at his calloused fingers.

He sniffed and grappled onto a scuffed briefcase, "What will you do when..."

"Strictly chores."

"Yes," the man grumbled, which was as close to praise as he ever got before he allowed Harry to turn his attention back to the begonias.

Hearing the key clink into the ignition and the dinky little car rumble away down the street, the boy sipped from the mouth of the hose and staggered to his feet.

Things were much better when he kept his head down and his hands busy; even if it meant pruned fingers and a drenched forehead, it also meant a lot less bruises.

Wiping off his shoes on the doormat, he ducked into the house and scrambled into the kitchen.

Aunt Petunia looked up at him with pursed lips from the kitchen table, her ring finger and thumb pinching onto a crisp magazine page poised in mid air.

"Ma'am."

She blinked, "Yes?"

"Can I have a glass of water?"

"May I," she coughed.

" _May I_  have a glass of water?"

Her eyes narrowed into fine points, she searched Harry's face with flaring nostrils, "One small glass."

The boy immediately scrambled to the cabinets, hesitantly grasping a medium size cup.

"Smaller."

He let an inaudible sigh and put a small cup under the faucet, downing it abruptly and looking back at his aunt with a silent question. He was so very thirsty.

"I  _suppose_  so."

She was especially generous this afternoon and the rest of the evening, it seemed; she had even let him adjourn to his room. He had spent the rest of his day reveling at the sight of the sun sinking below the hills and flipping through old textbooks he had hidden under his bed.

As the early evening had hit, a soft breeze had rolled in through an open crack in the window and grazed his back, making the text blur into a wash of unreadable gray, and he dozed.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhp

Footsteps plodded up the narrow wooden steps.

Meaty arms thumped on his door, "Freak, open  _up._ "

Raucous laughter and his eyes opened.

" _Shit,_ " Harry cursed under his breath, rubbing at his scalp and saying louder, "What is it that you want Dudley?"

"Yeah, come on, open up," another boy said with a hic and, judging by the mouse like quality of his voice, Harry could only conclude it was Piers Polkiss, "Where's the entertainment?"

Deciding it was best to get it over with, the boy pushed himself up from the bed and spun open the handle, "I don't have anything for you."

Dudley shoved the door open farther, making Harry stumble back and glare at them, "What is it, don't have any ten-year-old's to shove around?"

His jaw twitched, "No, but we have you, freak."

"Don't take after your father, Dudley, it's unbecoming," he spat.

The other boys blinked, looking confused, "At least I have a dad."

Harry's blood stirred, "What did you say to me?"

"I said, at least I have a dad," he taunted, grinning, "That wants me, too."

"Mine didn't abandon me."

"Oh really," the boy laughed, spinning around the room, "I don't see him anywhere."

Piers stumbled back and put his hand to his mouth, "Oh, wait, look, he's here! Look!"

"Don't talk about what you don't know which, unsurprisingly, is a lot of things," he growled, "In that case, maybe you shouldn't talk at all."

Dudley shoved him, spitting, "At least I know what it's like to have people care about me."

Harry saw red and, this time, when Dudley grasped onto his arm to shove again, his magic zapped and sent the boy slamming to the other wall. Piers staggered violently, not bothering to give the boy one last look before bolting out of the room and down the stairs.

It was the mousy, high pitched screech which forcibly dragged Harry out of his thoughts and sent him spiraling back to reality.

He stumbled towards Dudley, shocked, and when he saw the swell of red tinting the creme wall from Dudley's head, the only sound in his ears was a high pitched ring.

He sunk to his knees like melting vanilla ice cream, digging his fingers into the other boy's wrist and exhaling in relief at the steady  _thump, thump, thump, thump_.

Vernon was going to kill him.

No, worse than kill him, let his existence linger on for days like the string of a harp being pulled until- _pop_ \- he broke.

Oh, no. No. No, no, no, no, no.

Please, no.

Merlin, no.

Harry staggered to his feet and grasped his wand from a loose floor board, stepping in and out of his open doorway like a water bug trying to break the surface tension. He glanced timidly at the unconscious Dudley before rushing down a narrow hallway and narrow steps. Thump, thump, thump, thump.

He had barely registered the sensation of the warm wand in his hand, or the feel of his feet colliding against wood than linoleum then grass and, at last, sidewalk.

Plod, plod, plod.

He couldn't, he wouldn't be there when Vernon got home.

He had to go somewhere and, with that in mind, the boy sprinted several blocks before slowing to a halt when his need for oxygen overpowered his adrenalin.

Diagon Alley, he'd stayed there in third year, why not now?

It'd be perfect.

_Pop-_

He smiled at the sound of the Knight Bus.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this work  
> Warnings: swearing, non-graphic violence

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhp

It was a miracle, that was the only thing he could call it, and for the first time, Harry thought that maybe, just maybe, fate wasn't such a cold-hearted bitch.

When the Knight Bus had pulled in with a pop, not only had the boy just realized that he'd put on the one pair of pants that had spare galleons in the back pocket from that one trip to Hogsmeade back in April, but he noticed that he had the exact fare he needed to board the bus.

And there he was, staring at an all too knobby and seedy looking Stanley Shunpike, with relief blooming on his face like Aunt Petunia's morning glories in Spring. He clenched the two galleons and forty-three knuts, exactly forty-three knuts, not forty-two, or forty-one, reveling at the feel of the cold forgotten metal webbed in lint.

Miracle, a miracle, a small one, yet nonetheless, it had to be a miracle.

The young man spat onto the concrete and leaned slightly out of the way, gesturing vaguely inside before ripping the galleons from his hands, "You're in luck, get on."

That had marked the beginning of his days in Diagon Alley and, clenching onto the bus seat for dear life, he couldn't imagine what would happen if he didn't have the fare.

Timidly denying the offer of hot tea midway through the ride, it was only fifteen minutes or so when the driver had stopped with a jerk and sent him barreling into the seat in front of him. He was left reeling at the gleam of a 'LEAKY CAULDRON' sign right outside the window.

The next hour consisted of having Tom, the landlord, help him through the brick entrance, him traversing to Gringotts' and back, dumping thirteen galleons in his burly hands and finally- finally- renting a room to fall into bed.

His last thought before his head hit the dust-caked pillow was that Vernon was probably going to destroy all his things. It left him with a sharp ache in his chest when he remembered the only things that ever meant something to him were in his trunk: the invisibility cloak and his photo album.

The two things left by his parents.

It meant everything to him.

He had to get it back sometime.

Merlin, he hoped the man would wait.

But after what happened to Dudley...

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

The next morning he was forced out of bed not by his own will but by a screech that very clearly resembled that of Aunt Petunia's.

He opened his eyes, rubbing the last remnants of sleep from his vision, and stared puffy-faced at the white feathers that lingered in the right of his vision. He rubbed again, blinking, and then heard a soft hoot.

The sheets pooled around his legs as he jolted upwards, "Hedwig!" he smiled, wondering how she had found him, "Smart girl."

Her talons dug onto the bed post and the remarkable bird rubbed her beak onto Harry's hand, cooing at the compliment.

After that, he had managed to drag himself out of bed despite the lurking tiredness making his head fuzzy and jumped into a cold shower, only dressing and heading downstairs when he felt suitably awake.

The wooden floors were wide and worn down and it seemed the durability of them was quickly disappearing despite the use of magic to keep them from caving it but, nevertheless, it had a homey feel that reminded him distinctly of the Burrow. Along with that, the varnish was scuffed and rubbed off in some places, leaving not only the stairs but the walls having areas of faded brown patches that looked and felt like the lining of an old tweed jacket. All of this left him taking very slow, deliberate steps with his arms grasping onto the railings.

A maid brushed past him with a stack of towels, not at all deterred by the run down state of the Inn, "No need to look so nervous, dear!"

He flicked his hair over his scar and rearranged his glasses, realizing someone might recognize him, and padded downstairs to get breakfast. Immediately after he sat down, his face was met with a menu and only a few moments after that a plate and silverware appeared with a pop, clunking onto the table, and joined with pumpkin juice, salted avocado, steaming sausage and scrambled eggs.

It was the best meal he'd had in a long while and, in fact, the quality of it reflected the contentedness he felt over the next few days.

Each morning after that he'd wake to the sound of the singular maid padding across the floor and knocking softly on the door, then greeted with a superb breakfast, after which he'd go out to Diagon Alley and meander through the shops. He'd managed to buy all of his required books and new, quality robes and clothing, often splurging on one thing or another which he ultimately forget when stuffed under the bed in his rented room.

Then he'd mill around for a while, flipping through strange texts that were stuffed near the back of Flourish and Blotts' and coated in dust, since it was the only thing to do until lunch or dinner.

This was how he had managed for days, reading and eating, until a hunger for adventure had infected him once again one late afternoon, the same hunger that had made him jump onto a broom for Neville's Remembrall in first year, the same hunger that forced him through forbidden corridors and hidden passages and otherwise dangerous places.

He didn't know what it had caused it so suddenly, making his eyes to stop mid-sentence and even forget to dog ear the page before flopping it onto the bedside table. Maybe it was the gradual setting of the sun, or the vaporous chill that hovered in the air, or even the faded word catalyst in the middle of the page, but as abruptly as the feeling had come on his coat was on and he was out the door.

It was only when he was tapping the bricks with his wand that Tom's voice hovered in his ears and made him stop, "Going somewhere, Longbottom?"

Harry leaned back, blinking, and remembered that was the alias he had chosen for himself.

Maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to be going out this late...

But that had never stopped him before.

"I'll be back soon," he said.

Tom leaned over from the counter, "Alright," his face shriveled in thought, "Just be careful."

He nodded and, right then, he was in Diagon Alley, watching the groups of people huddle and diminish the longer he walked and the closer he got to the shadier edges.

Before he knew it, the sun was sunken below the dinky shops and then pocketed between the rolling hills in the distance.

The chill grew, the buildings getting progressively darker and more cobbled the farther he went.

And the dark was not just in mere color, but like a wafting, mute specter that prodded him by the elbows and dug itself into his tonsils. It pervaded him, teasing, chilly, and made his arms pulse.

It was only when he passed Borgin and Burkes that he paused, realizing how far he had went.

The sun was now only a sliver, like a fingernail receding into the distance.

He should get out of here. He really shouldn't be here. And it was with that realization that the hunger for adventure had dimmed considerably, making his muscles tense and causing him to turn the other direction.

He really should get back to the Leaky Cauldron.

Harry shielded his face and pointed it down to the cobblestones, his shoulders tucking inwards at the odd clinks and cackles that filled the air.

A gaunt old woman grasped him by the arm, pulling him back, "You want to buy a pretty locket now, boy?"

She pulled it up by the chain, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum, causing the silver and green to bounce off the remaining light.

"No thanks," he tittered, trying to pull away.

"But your eyes, your eyes go so well with this, so very well," she laughed, digging sharp nails into his arm.

He shoved at the woman and shuffled backward in the other direction, "I said no thanks."

Harry stumbled back and then forward when a door right behind him creaked open, sending three staggering men out into the street.

"You givin' 'im any tro-uble, n-now, Gretchen?"

The boy could taste the alcohol sullying his words and he reeled as one of them, indistinguishable from the last, grasped onto his shoulder and rubbed at the back of his neck.

"You 'ave pretty eyes, I'll give ya a knut if ya kiss me on the cheek," he pointed at his stubble caked in dry vomit.

Harry pulled away but his cohort gripped at his other shoulder, "I'll give ya one more nut than that," he chuckled, grinning sickly at the innuendo.

The boy stumbled forward, feeling his wrist being tugged at with greasy fingers, and he watched in barely concealed horror as the last sliver of light fully disappeared and cloaked Knockturn Alley in a sheath of dark.

"C'mon, now, no need to be so mean," the third one laughed, "Then again, I like 'em w-when they struggle."

Harry let out a rasp, struggling for his wand until it was pulled out of his pocket and rolled down the street by one of the men.

He wrenched himself forward only to be shoved back by one of them into the other two's arms, "The on'ly wand you'll need is mine."

And it was right at that moment, squeezing his eyes shut when one of them clawed at his collar, that he heard a voice as gentle as honey-soaked air yet as threatening as an animal ready to pounce waft into his right ear, "Step away from him."

As the arms pulled away the boy opened his eyes and gazed up at the man; he was imposing, a little more than six feet tall, towering above the drunken, squat figures with dark, curly hair poking out from under a hood.

Even from under the clock, Harry could tell the man had a sinewy yet lithe body like a thick piece of grass arching its back in the breeze.

"We was jus', jus' wanting some fun," the third one justified, stepping back with his hands up.

The tall man glowered at them, slowly guiding his own hand to the small of the boy's back, "Make sure that it does not occur again."

Far from wanting to rush away, the boy tried to dig his back even closer to the warmth that coursed from the man's hand through his body.

He lead Harry away from the men, blinking from under his hood with a slow, concealed grin, "It is a tragedy that one such as yourself has to suffer such indecencies."

"Thank you so much," the boy gasped, swallowing, "I don't know what would've happened if you hadn't shown up."

The man seemed to ignore him for a long while until he spoke again, eyes just as soft and golden as his voice when they rested on his face, "What is it that you are doing out here at this time of night?"

He swallowed the thick saliva in his mouth and stared pointedly at the ground, "I didn't realize how late it was getting and where I was heading."

The man tapped at his chin, sending the boy to look up at him again, and he was instantly enthralled by the supple, pale face framed by curls. So engrossed in the long neck that widened out into a strong chin, shallow cheeks, and pale lips, it was several moments until Harry turned away and glanced timidly at the alleyway he was approaching.

"I'm sorry, I have to be going," he tried to slide away from the warm palm on his back, coughing, "but thank you once again."

As suddenly as he had said that, he was tugged into the narrow alleyway, "I'm afraid you're not going anywhere."

"What?"

It felt like the ground was rustling underneath his feet.

"You have such a rich scent, I've been smelling you for days and it's been driving me insane," his pushed Harry against the wall, "It's a shame I have to ruin such a pretty neck..."

"What are you talking about?" the boy griped, "This isn't funny."

The man put his thumb up against Harry's jugular, watching the vein puff up with a swell of blood just underneath his skin and rise up to his face with red, "But I am very hungry."

Those golden brown eyes that looked like crisped mangoes glinting in the sun turned a ruddy brown, and it was the last thing the boy saw besides the gleam of sharp teeth that instantly accompanied a sharp pain in his neck.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: minor swearing

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

It had been three days, three intoxicating, miserable days. Three days with the scent dancing in his nose and teeth and taste buds, three days of it tickling the back of his throat, permeated in the air like a bottle of fine wine being opened. Three days of feeling like there was a hot branding iron scalding his esophagus, and three nights of stalking the alley with nothing, nada, ne rein, no owner of that scent.

That, that, smell which had managed to be all at once titillating and torturous, teasing and pervading him endlessly.

If anything, it enraged him, made him tremble in pleasure and gutless fury that, for the first time in a long while, he was confronted with something that he wanted.

And, oh, he wanted that scent. He wanted the owner of the scent, to mark him and bite him and to drink all of his succulent juices until nothing was left and his bones were mere dust, to tear through flesh and marrow and have the scent be apart of himself.

He wanted it.

No, needed it. Needed it like he had needed nothing before. He needed this succubus that made the nerves in his gums prickle. And it had all begun on that one fateful evening he had stalked Diagon Alley, scented the human, and left unable to find him, only to come back the next morning with nothing to show for it.

He had left the palace, of all things, and this was the first time that he had not entrusted his servants with the task of catching him food.

The situation was, after all, much too delicate, and the prey much too enticing, for him to give up the hunt.

Each morning for three days he would return, empty-handed, and crumble like a shriveled coat into his chambers, unable and unwilling to go to sleep when that scent tickled him. That damnable, wretched, and succulent scent. Each night he'd stalk the alleys and and streets, not finding him, because that damned human was everywhere in the air and in his nose and yet nowhere to be found.

That is until the fourth night, the fourth night he'd dedicate to finding his prey, the fourth night he left the palace, and the forth night he'd be searching. It was both a fourth night and a first night, the first night he had felt the anticipation of the hunt reach a crescendo in a very, very long time, and the first night that he'd find that human.

And the moment he made it to Diagon Alley, evading royal guards and inattentive servants, the vampire could feel something special and luminous and exciting in the air that night. He had let the pounding in his teeth guide him and, on this night that was both a fourth and first, he had found him.

He was a boy wandering to places he had no business being. Pale with a dark mop of hair, eyes like sprouting foliage, and a figure that made him want to do more than just find a quick meal.

He was, by no means, gorgeous, but there was something about him that had resonated with the man. A gracefulness that existed despite his awkward shuffle and hunched shoulders, a smooth quality that rivaled his own. It was a boy who had seen many things, perhaps too much, yet moved in spite of it.

And, oh, that smell. The scent that trailed in the air like a garland expanding everywhere, like the richness of simple pinot noir to a drunk beggar; it was almost too much to not rush out and drink the fine wine right then and there.

So he had just watched, all at once both able and unable to do anything at all but see and memorize the texture of his skin and hair and neck. That long, languorous neck.

He stalked after the unnamed boy, ducking, weaving through shops and counting the hairs on his head with each step he grew closer.

It was mere minutes after that in which the boy was accosted by three urchins, fondled and teased and writhing under their disgusting touch. Blood stirred in the vampire's gut, teeth aching to claim back what was rightfully his.

That boy was his.

His to be eaten, fondled, touched, and claimed. His for an eternity.

So, he had taken his meal back, in a position to kill the three men yet not doing so because he wanted more than the boy's body, he wanted his trust. If even only for a moment. How odd.

A few quick words and the vampire placed his hand on his back, leading him, and almost trembled at the sensation of warmth coursing through his palm. Warmth from the boy, the warmth of too much hot blood tackling against veins and arteries.

He had loved the thrill of the chase, one he hadn't felt in a long time and, unknowingly, wanting to see the green depths of the boy's eyes, he had used his allure. He wanted, needed, to be noticed by his meal- to captivate.

Those eyes trailed over him, green glances spreading like the growth of a meadow over his neck, chin, nose and lips. And then- they looked away. They had the gal to look away, to resist him, when he had the right to own those eyes.

"I'm sorry, I have to be going," the boy said, "but thank you once again."

Rage, that struck him blindly, suddenly, and murderously, roared in his gut, making his teeth ache.

How dare he, how dare a mere human look away from him, the Vampire Lord. Resist his allure like it was a pesky fly.

And so he had taken his meal, shoved him into an alley, and finally, on the fourth night, ate.

It was on this very night, the fourth night, and a first of sorts, that one very unexpected thing had happened. One thing which had not occurred within the vampiric society for hundreds of years.

The boy did not die.

Unknowing of this, the Lord stalked away, leaving his supposedly dead prey in the alleyway.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

His eyelids pulsed, corneas gleaming like white crescent moons and thick eyelashes barring his vision, before closing again.

Merlin. That was the first thought he had when he woke up, roundly followed by, what the hell did I do last night?

His whole body ached fiercely, tendons and ligaments slow-roasting over a fire while his nerves coiled like snakes winding their way over taut muscles.

It didn't help much that his bed was so stiff and oddly gritty. Like his skin was sandwiched against sandpaper.

Cold, very cold and windy. Maybe he left open a window, or a maid did to cool it off last afternoon. But he didn't remember doing that, or seeing his window open.

In fact, there was a whole lot he couldn't remember. Like what he did last night or, for that matter, what he did yesterday at all; he couldn't even remember leaving the Leaky Cauldron. Or getting back.

No. He didn't remember returning, or waving to Tom like he always did when he stepped in through the brick entrance, or hearing the gruff "Nice to see you back", or stepping into the shower and falling into bed.

His hand brushed gingerly over the surface he laid on, recoiling softly at the harshness of it, and Harry's mind sped.

Maybe he rolled off of the bed last night. He would move to look but, Merlin, he was tired.

He probably didn't get a good sleep, what with him being on the floor and all, and that would explain why he ached too.

Something squeaked in his ear and, thinking it was the door, Harry bobbed his head to the left, hissing sharply at the sensation in his neck. He brought his arm up to it regardless of the tension lacing his bones and gingerly probed the skin.

There was a dry, crumbly, crumbly something gauzed over his neck that felt like old paper but less thick. As he felt more, half blinded by the heaviness in his eyelids, he felt two distinct pricks parallel to each other.

His hands felt more harshly, trembling and frantic, trailing over the scabbed edges.

And his eyes faught against his eyelids, perching them up back into the sockets, both desperate and unwilling to see.

His vision grew slowly less blurred, making out the straight edges of concrete and the grayness of bricks... bricks covered in, in, in a something, something that he couldn't quite make out until...

Until one dot, one little dot on the white mortar between two bricks blearing bright in the middle of his eyes, gleamed like a neon sign.

Red, not red, but a distinct brown-red, like blood exposed to oxygen.

Blood.

As that word pulsed very vividly in his brain, Harry's eyes nimbly trailed off the dot, watching at the dots grew in size, until they sliced over the bricks like fat long loogies, and then... and then... everything, the bricks, the muddy ground, his neck and hands and face and clothes were slathered in the stuff. Slathered in the cold, dried red that pulsed like a hot, wet thing in his head.

He couldn't help it, he whimpered and his body jolted up, shuffling back to the opposite wall as best it could, and he stared at the blood caked like old icing on a pastry.

And then as fast as the blood had once been rushing out of two pricks on his neck, disjointed little memories flooded into his consciousness.

The word catalyst on a dried old page, and then he left- left the Leaky Cauldron, and, Tom?

Had Tom been... yes, yes he had. And then walking, night, men, three of them?

What had they done?

Asked him for directions maybe, or- doesn't matter. And then, another man.

Yes, another man. Pulled him away, and he thanked him-what for, though?- and the man's eyes were as luminous and golden as wheat fields in Tuscany. And then, they weren't; those eyes were brown. Brown like dried blood.

Then there was an alley-where he was now-why was he here?- and then that man, with his brown-red-golden eyes, and pain. Pain like screws drivers dropping from thirty feet up and driving two cold spikes into his neck. And throat. His blood fountaining outwards.

...Nothing.

Harry felt for the two parallel holes in his neck, gasping at the sensation of throbbing underneath his fingers.

Did that man bite him?

He gasped, twisting in revulsion, and he felt his stomach turn.

He needed to get out of here.

Right now.

The sight of blood mixed with dirt and stone and empty firewhiskey glasses shattered on the ground was too much.

Much too much.

Staggering to his feet, he realized that blood was all over him too; on his clothes and skin even dried on the tips of his eyelashes. People couldn't see him this way.

He scrambled for his wand, feeling the wood in his back pocket with a relieved sigh, and encanted 'Scourgify' so much so that his skin started to chaff as if covered in a find layer of dry hand soap.

With that he had stumbled out of the alleyway and into the streets, tipping drunkenly back into the small crevice between two buildings at the blinding sunlight.

Rubbing at his eyes, he stepped back in the street and averted them into the ground, wondering blankly at why the sun felt so peculiarly hot today. Like it burned his corneas.

His long, hot, and tired trek back to the Leaky Cauldron was was just that- long, hot and tired. As well as comfortably blank as the pain in his muscles and neck outweighed his ability to think about what had happened.

It had allowed him to avoid questions such as, why had that man bitten me?

And especially: What does it mean?

By the time he had reached the brick wall, vision fuzzy and his head unpleasantly achy, he felt ready to collapse on his rented bed and curl up for days.

If he was lucky, then no one would know he had been gone at all.

This, unfortunately, was not the case, seeing as how the moment he stepped into the dinky, moth-eaten place, every eye had immediately zipped to him.

Tom looked up from the dusty countertop, blinking and immediately stopping the harsh scrub and then, moments later, he clapped a big, burly hand onto his shoulder, "Where have you been, lad?"

Harry opened and closed his mouth, eyes wavering over the man's shoulder and looking at the messy sign plastered to the wall that read:

'Missing:

Neville Longbottom

A student at Hogwarts, fairly short with dark hair, may be wearing glasses and solid-colored clothing. Pale.'

"How long have I been gone?" the boy was startled at how thick and raspy his voice was.

"Three days," the man said, "At first I'd thought you'd left so you didn't have to pay for the extra days in the room, but you left your stuff here and didn't come back. Thought you coulda been dead."

The boy reeled, "Three days?"

"Merlin, you're pale, where've you been? We should get you to Mongo's..."

"No, no, I'm fine! I was spending time with," his tongue hung on the edge of his gums, "my uncle, down at Fortescue's; he came into town and, you know, I didn't realize how much time had gone by."

"You shouldn't have left so suddenly, shoulda told me where you were going! You almost just gave me a heartattack, walking in like the dead."

Harry smiled sheepishly, face faltering, and Tom ripped the Missing sign off the wall while walking back to the counter.

"And you're sure you're okay?"

"Yes, sir," the boy nodded, and staggered up the stairs before Tom called him back.

"Oh, some people were looking for you while you were gone," he said, "Some professor at Hogwarts, I think, didn't mention your name though."

Harry nodded, continuing up the steps with a grimace, and fell into bed the first chance he got.

He could think later.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing, ideologically sensitive material, minor sexual themes

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

It was a shame. An absolute shame. When Harry had awoken, he didn't even have the comfort of getting those blissful, short seconds where it would appear everything was normal and that nothing had happened to him.

He would've loved to wake up thinking about the inevitable discouraging glances one of the maids-Cassa-would give him if he decided to indulge in treacle tarts for his regular breakfast.

Or about how the Inn could really increase their profitability if they took some time to refurnish the place.

Perhaps even awake thinking on how he could finish that summer essay he was still stuck on, about the fluidity of state changes from a liquid to a solid for transfiguration.

Thoughts about food and economy and- trans... transublimination.. transsubstatantionalism- or whatever in Merlin's name it was- would've been a luxury.

Instead he woke up from his already fitful sleep with the head-smashing thought of: I've been bitten in an alleyway.

It was proudly accompanied by the unwelcome, yet nonetheless eager, memory of last night. Or more specifically, four nights ago, or however long he had been comatose.

Maybe he would've awoken peacefully, with a fleeting relief that it had only been a dream, if he hadn't felt the dull pulse of his pricks just underneath the surface of his throat. It was an achy heat that radiated out from the bite and drummed over only the right side of his neck.

I've been bitten.

Oh, Merlin.

Who would do that?

Harry slid out of bed, padding soundlessly into the bathroom while poking the surface of his skin slightly above his shoulder blade.

This isn't going to look pretty, was the last thought he had before his eyes beamed at the crooked mirror dangling a few inches above the sink. And it was with that he found himself tumult violently backwards, bashing his right shoulder into the shower directly behind and hearing it vibrate underneath him with a smack.

He barreled forward, hissing at the stinging response that zapped from his shoulder to pricks in his neck, and was re-met with his reflection in the mirror when his arms dug back into the side of the sink and his head stopped four inches from the glass.

He was perched frozen, eyes unwillingly trailing over the tinged pink of his throat that was gradually appearing more swollen, until the two narrow, precipice like holes cut into his vision.

His hand wavered back and forth, wondering if it was a good idea to feel the holes as he bared more of his burning neck to the mirror.

It was odd, seeing one side of his neck to be a washed red, but the rest of his neck and skin to be so taut over his bones that it was stretched white.

It could get infected. It could be infected already.

It was another persons' saliva that his blood was now bathed in.

But what person would do this?

What human would do this?

The word human lit like a candle in his brain, the wax of it seeping to the base of his skull and weeping down the back of his throat. It calcified in the bottom of his stomach.

More than just would've, what type of human possibly could've done this? The two pricks dug very deeply down into his throat, as if someone had decided to puncture the skin with long screws and remove them.

No ones' teeth were that long. And it wasn't like an animal bit him- Harry very clearly remembered the warm hands grazing lightly at the small of his back that night. The brief twitch of pale lips into something resembling a smile. And the eyes that sent strands of honey wheat tickling his face when they looked at him.

Harry shrugged off the tightness brewing in his lower stomach, turning a lively shade of red and looking at the rustic faucet below the mirror.

Admittedly, he was attractive, but of course the boy only felt an, uh, appreciation of the elder man's looks. It was just as if he was looking at a beautiful vase; the vase was pretty but there was no way he could feel any sexual attraction to it.

He liked girls, like Cho, or whatever. He didn't like men.

Besides, that man had bitten him, how could he feel anything at all for a man...

If he could even be called a man at all, Harry thought, his stomach violently revolting at that thought the moment it sunk in.

He gagged into the sink and covered his mouth, thinking maybe he was going to vomit but ending up only dry heaving.

Not a human at all.

"Then what?" the boy shot back, mumbling to himself.

It was then that his ears perked up at the sound of a hand lightly knocking on his door, "Mr. Longbottom?"

He staggered out of the bathroom, ruthlessly tucking away the thought of what was human- and- not human when his head peeked up from the bathroom doorway.

"Yes?" he called.

There was a pregnant pause on the other side of the door before the maid said, "Breakfast," and walked to the next door of the adjoining room in the hallway.

It was then that he decided to drench himself and his stinging neck into the shower. He spent an excessively long time dunking his ears evenly between the jets and watching as it cascaded down the drain, reveling in the feeling of hearing nothing but the rush of water.

An hour later his hair was semi-organized into a damp, curling mop and the pricks in his neck concealed by a light bandage and high-collared robes.

Overall, he looked a little peaky but more presentable than when he walked in last afternoon- like the dead, in Tom's words.

As if nothing had ever happened at all, he ducked out of the rented room, glided through the halls and down a large staircase, and perched himself down in his usual spot.

The next moment, as always, a menu popped in the air right before him with faded letters and scuffed edges. He had long since gotten used to it enough that he didn't address the booklet as sir, or ma'am, or say please (which had always made the other maids laugh) when ordering his food.

It was directly after he had ordered buttered toast with a side of avocado and the menu popped away that he felt a swap at the back of his head.

He ducked, craning his head to meet angry, red-rimmed eyes.

"Do you have any idea," the maid glowered at him, "How worried I was?"

Harry blinked, reeling, "I'm sorry."

"If you were-" she started, breathing starting to waver, "If you were, then you would've thought maybe, just maybe, it was a stupid idea to leave for days without saying a single word!"

The women, Cassa, tugged at the heavy stack of towel in her hands, "Think for once."

A moment later his food appeared and clanked down onto the table and that was when she swiftly spun the other direction.

The boy blinked once again, he had barely even known her. He'd only been here for- what?- a little more than a week.

Still, he couldn't help but feel sediments of guilt whirl in his throat which, combined with debate in his head about the bite, effectively made him stop eating at the first bite.

After he had clunked the toast back to the chipped plate, he stepped up and determinedly moved towards to the brick entrance to Diagon Alley.

He didn't have time to keep himself occupied with, well, thoughts of the maids and what he did wrong.

He needed to find out who-or what, more exactly- had bitten him.

It was then that Tom waved him over the counter after glancing surreptitiously to the left and right, "Longbottom, come here."

He ducked his head over to the man, watching him continue to circulate between a series of activities like scrubbing at cups or at the counter or waving to certain visitors on the other side of the room.

"Now, you aren't going away now, are ya?" he muttered, looking uncharacteristically agitated when his already thick jaw tightened.

Harry rubbed guiltily at the back of his neck, coughing, "I'll be back in a few hours."

The wrinkled man sighed, sending his nails raking through his close-cropped hair, and peered over Harry's shoulder at a distant point on the opposite wall, "I'm sorry about Cassa."

"It's fine, sir," the boy said.

"No, ya see, she had just lost her boy- her son- and husband, I don't know if ya knew him- Blacke Crawford- he was a pretty famous auror, and you know how dangerous it is being in that profession and," the man paused heartily, looking as if he was trying to articulate the indescribable, "Anyways, after that she didn't have anywhere to go."

Harry nodded.

His hand dug so strongly with the rag into the surface of the he was cleaning the boy thought it could shatter at any moment, "You're the nicest visitor she's had in a while, and after losing her family like that-" he swallowed, "She needed someone to care for."

The boy felt his head lower despite the response of his neck, and examined the worn ground under his equally worn shoes.

"I think you remind her of him- her son, that is," he murmured, "You look a lot like 'im, from what I've heard from the other maids."

There was an ensuing silence between them, his throat and the innkeeper's battling against an odd tightness.

"You take care of yer'self, Neville, and if someone's hurting you-" the man stopped, shaking his head as if he had just said something stupid, "Well, just keep yourself safe, if not for yourself then for her sake, at least."

The pounding in Harry's heart matched the pounding in his neck and he gulped uncomfortably, finding himself unable to say that no one had hurt him, "I'll do that, thanks, sir."

The elder man nodded at him and gestured towards the brick entrance, allowing him to go.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing, descriptions of pain

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

The moment he had entered the dinky little book store, Flourish and Blotts, he seriously considered just going back to the Inn to crawl up in his rented bed.

He didn't feel up to the challenge of wading through pages and pages of books to find what he was looking for, not today. Or any day, for that matter.

A ten minute walk would've cleared his head of what Tom told him, he had thought right before leaving through the brick entrance.

Unfortunately, this was not true. A ten minute walk out in the blaring hot sun had only worsened the heaviness in his chest and the constant thrumming of his bite. A ten minute walk now held a new connotation to him, meaning his feet would sink into the cobble stone as weighty as the thoughts in his brain spiraled downward. It also meant the sensation of hot resin pouring into his bite and slickening his gut.

The book store was not much better, either, seeing as how the light would filter in through the expansive and thin glass covering the walls and pelt hot hail at him.

Harry edged closer to the shelves, wiping at his sweaty brow and grimacing.

Why was he even here anyways?

It didn't make much sense to him; the bite most likely meant absolutely nothing. The only thing it said was that he had been attacked by a mad man. They didn't have a book on that sort of thing.

Relieved, he backed away from the shelves, lingering hesitantly at the doorway when he started tapping the doorknob.

But...

He tapped, each finger falling successively on the reflective surface and making the old knob twitch.

What if it does mean something?

That's what he was here for, right? To see if the bite had an answer and then fix it, like he always did?

This isn't a normal bite, he told himself, swallowing thickly at the admission.

It wasn't. It pounded, day and night, constantly. He didn't know how deep it went past the skin, but he could tell it was pretty far- can a human do that? A human bite looks like twenty little curved indents, and this was only two very deep ones.

It's not normal.

Harry felt his gut revolt at the word, a little Vernon sitting on his shoulder and shouting it into his ear.

He tapped again at the knob, nibbling on the gums of his lower lip.

"Is there something you're looking for, sir?"

Harry superstitiously brushed his hair over his scar, spinning around and giving a faltering smile at the cashier who blinked back him behind a pair of large round glasses.

She looked almost like a Trelawney, yet far lass bug-like than he was expecting by the sound of her voice.

Decide, quickly. Run from it or confront it. Are you a Gryffindor or not?

"I'm looking for a book about," he paused, squinting at the window gleaming in sunlight, "About dark creatures, if you have it?"

She tilted the glasses over the bridge of her nose from over the counter, "Any book in particular?"

"No, not really," Harry replied, mouth opening and closing as if to justify himself, "I'm new to the subject and don't really know what to look for; summer essays can be a real pain, you know?"

The woman let her shoulders loose as if they'd been hung up by ropes, laughing nervously, "Oh, thought we had a dark wizard on our hands there for a moment."

She spent the next thirty minutes introducing him to the laughably small selection of books that existed in the very back, darkest corner of Flourish and Blotts. Compared to the other shelves, with perfectly lined, dusted and polished looking books, the section was full of worn binding and covers gritty with webs. It was later when he opened the books that the missing and yellowed pages became readily apparent. Hermione would've had an epileptic fit.

"You're sure this is all of them?" Harry asked, flopping a barely legible Creatures of Dark Magic into his own hands that sent little plumes of dust and mites into the air and him into a small coughing fit.

She scratched at the back of her neck, fiddling with her glasses, "This sort of thing doesn't attract customers," she reddened at Harry's look, "Not that- not that, that's what I'm only here for! I work here because I love books, learning, yes, but..."

He gestured haltingly at her, "It's alright, I just don't think I'll find what I'm looking for with only these."

Her voice went down to a conspiratorial whisper, "I shouldn't be telling you this, seeing as how you're only a boy, but, well, if you really need to find books for your essay," she stopped for a moment, "Knockturn Alley has a lot more than this about creatures- but don't go down there without an adult, you hear? It can get dangerous, especially at night."

"Trust me, I know," he grumbled under his breath, panicking for a moment until he looked at her expression and realized she hadn't heard.

"Is that all you need?"

He nodded, "Yes, thank you."

She scurried back to the other side of the bookstore when the bell rang back on the counter, and Harry was finally left alone.

He realized he felt a lot less sick now, especially when the sun couldn't reach over the particularly tall shelf that, instead, sent the light trailing over the wall rather than the corner he slunk into.

He sat on the floor with crossed legs and perched the book he was holding on his knees, reading over the chapters entitled Ogres, Black Ghosts, Dementors, and, before he knew it, he had spent a solid hour reading, his position gradually turning more lazy and wilting as he leaned his back against the shelves and rested his head on his hand.

He skimmed over chapters, blindly and unseeingly gazing over dull sections and flipping constantly back to the Table of Contents. That is, until he saw it. His eyes glazing over the words Chapter 8 followed by a colon and then, about two inches down from that, was the simple word: Vampire. 

The holes in his neck let out a hot, particularly painful pulse the moment his eyes were about to skate right over the word and suddenly it had popped out to him.

He felt for the holes, index finger softly trailing over the scabbed edges of the bite before he took a nauseating breath of stale air.

You've already been over this, his head told him, there's no way you could be bitten by a... a... that's crazy.

And yet he had already known that the word meant something, something perhaps crazy, yet something that was perhaps equally as true. He fingered the crisp edge of the page, swallowing at the tightness in his throat, and started reading.

_Vampires are one of the few known Dark Creatures that have not yet been eradicated by the Ministry of Magic. Unlike the other creatures featured in this book, such as Dementors, who are only around to this day because of their service to Azkaban (refer to page 125); Vampires still circulate throughout Magical Britain and collective niches of Egypt because of, first and foremost, their noted intelligence, secondly, their physical power, and lastly, because of their forceful alluring and attractive powers (as theorized by Gradwin the Great, refer to page 345)._

The man that Harry had met a few nights ago lingered in the forefront of his head, just as vivid and warm as he had been that night, and the boy scrambled to flip another few pages until his eyes landed on another valuable block of text.

_Section Three: Use of Charms_

_I. The Problem of Evidence_

_Another speculative difference between Vampires and other Dark creatures includes their ability to use a an entirely wandless, dark magic power dubbed, by some experts, as The Allure. There is much argument within the field of Vampiric Studies if such a power exists, the issue both a polarizing and lively debate that Professor Gradwin the Great, House of Leold founder, calls: "One of the most supremely astounding and well-evidenced collective feature of the Vampiric Society which any great thinker would consider true," (Gradwin, 34)._

_Other thinkers of the era are skeptical of the evidence of The Allure, remarking that "only witness testimony has provided the shocking lack of proof to promote such an outrageous claim," (Delicorian, 27). No magical traces or remnants of the entirely kinetic, so-called wandless magic have remained in any Vampiric encounter within the casualties._

_II. Witness Testimony_

_The few and far in between witnesses who have ever managed to miraculously escape a Vampire encounter without getting bitten unanimously agree that they have felt the effects of The Allure (refer to the Alberta-Duhrer case on page 367)._

_Symptoms that witnesses recall include:_

_-unshakable sensations of lust for the Vampire attacker_

_-pulsing heat coursing throughout the body from when the attacker has skin contact_

_-unable to look away from the eyes and/or face of the Vampire attacker_

Harry felt an even more pronounced sensation of nausea well up in his gut. This wasn't true. This couldn't be true. He skipped a few more pages, eyes landing randomly on a particularly crinkled one.

_Section 5: Consequence of a Vampire encounter_

_I. First Scenario: Escape and Means of It_

_Harry skimmed even more._

_II. Second scenario: Bite Victim_

_In a Vampire's teeth exists a lethal poison comparable to that of a Rinogerous Snake in its prime, sixteen times over, and the chemical composition infinitely more deadly. Where there have been survivors of a Rinogerous bit, there has never been a recorded human in history who has ever, in any time, any place, culture, or any condition, that has survived a Vampire bite._

Harry's jolted when his knee bashed into the shelf he was resting his back against, eyes wide the more he read.

_As seen in test rabbits, as the concentrated poison sets into the bloodstream, it only takes a matter of thirty seconds or less for the victim to completely die. There is no surviving a Vampire bite, which make them, not extinct and currently thriving as of yet, one of the most, if not the most "dangerous dark magic creature to ever exist within the Magical and non-magical realm", (Cornaro, 345)._

_The only case of a surviving victim is within Vampiric mythology, (refer to page 373)._

Harry quickly and blindly flipped to that page, eyes resting dead set on the half-ripped page, and he started reading what he could.

_Section 10: Mythology- Subsection of Culture_

_I. Vampiric Belief Systems_

_One of the most prominent belief systems of the Vampiric society, widespread and accepted as truth by many in those observed by the Ministry of Magic and Foundation for Creatures Assoc., is the belief in a so-called Kindling._

_The translated mythological belief goes as such:_

_When the turning of the age occurs,_

_when the foes threaten to destroy Us,_

_One- A Kindling to the Fire- shall rise up,_

_Once human, then Turned_

_The prediction of a "future time yet unseen" goes on to describe-_

The holes in his neck pulsed, hot and red and unfathomably painful as the sensation wracked through his body. The page was torn in half right then and no more could be read. Frantic, the boy flipped and looked for the missing half, scouring the shelf with his eyes before dizzily rising to his feet.

Stop, this is stupid. Utterly idiotic. No one has ever survived a Vampire bite, it's not possible.

The boy calmed just slightly.

That's just a stupid book, it means nothing. Nothing.

And yet he still found his hands looking for the missing half, and his heart, as well as the pounding in his neck dismissing what was clearly... what obviously had to be reason.

Fifteen minutes later, holding back the questions bursting from out of his head, he stumbled out of Flourish and Blotts, raised his collar just slightly over the bites and nimbly dragged himself back to the Inn.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing, sexual themes

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

He stumbled blindly back to the Inn much the same as how he'd gotten to the book store, passing sardine-packed shoppes and cobbled streets, and feeling the full force of the sun.

Yet this time something felt much different than before.

Maybe it was the sun's more acute position in the sky. Or maybe it was a hazy sort of a quality in the air. Maybe it was the puce-tinted clouds that hung like dumbbells strung up to a ceiling. Or maybe it was him, and what he knew, and most of all- most of all- the crisped and fuzzy edges and slightly faded letters he'd imagine to be on the missing half of page number 373.

He hated how the text had stopped abruptly, just like that- The prediction of a "future time yet unseen" goes on to describe-

Goes on to describe what? What exactly?

He found his fingers itching to sprint back and tear that library up binding by binding until he found it. And yet, on the other hand, he felt his stomach curl at such a thought, curl at the thought of finding the page and finishing it because, deep down, very, very deep down, he knew it just had to be something about him.

The parallel holes in his neck pulsed with a renewed energy, as if to say: 'yes, it has everything to do with you'.

He both wanted to know and didn't want to know, and the conflicting feelings sent his brain into another hurtling head ache and his stomach even more slick with nausea.

It was a relief when he finally reached the stout brick wall, deciding that cuddling up in a bed for another twelve hours didn't seem like such a bad thing. However, the second he stepped into the Leaky Cauldron he was greeted with a shocking sight.

All had seemed normal at first glance- the air was just as musky and stale as before, the tables were the same gritty, perpetually uncleaned texture, and the walls were covered in trailing webs. The sense of normalcy continued until his eyes had following the dots of sporadic spiders and crumbling wall panels, and a familiar sound made him stop.

It was the sound of a voice, a voice strict and disciplinarian enough that the moment he had heard it, his back straightened and his eyes shot downwards to the floor out of habit. He knew that voice too well and when he shook himself out of his confusion, the boy whirled his head around.

His eyes pounced to the man who hadn't yet noticed him. He recoiled immediately at the sight of black robes and greasy hair.

Snape.

And at the sight of the man, he had abruptly backed into the corner between the brick entrance and the Inn. He stood there for several moments, only edging his head closer to hear what the man was saying when he was sure that he hadn't seen him.

The professor was speaking with a tired looking Cassa, mumbling in such an unusual waspish and hushed drawl that the boy could only make out a few words he was saying.

"...Seen him?... Hogwarts... ran away... idiot boy"

Harry hunched down and peeked his head even more over the edge of the walled-off corner to see what was going on.

She was nodding politely, struggling with a large pot of hot soup that smelled so pungent he could tell it was Split-Pea even from this distance. She lifted the heavy thing and rested it along the side of her hip like how one might hold a baby if they were talking on a phone.

Her brow twitched in irritation for only a moment as she gripped with more difficultly the large pot, "A boy, hmm? The one that went missing a while ago?"

"Yes," his expression became, if possible, even more dour.

The maid smiled at him blankly for a moment, continuing her waddle to the counter and setting it down with a relieved sigh. Snape followed the woman whose eyes sweeping back and forth when she was able to turn her back to him.

The boy didn't know if he had just imagined it, but he could've sworn she had given him a slight nod to where he was. At that signal he retreated even more into the corner.

"Can't say I have," she lied, "He used to be here all the time, but I haven't seen him around since he went, you know, missing."

The professor didn't say anything, and the boy could only imagine that he had given her one tight nod.

"He was a sweet boy too; would you owl me when you find him, sir?"

In the next minute Harry heard a strangled sigh, muddled footsteps and the whoosh of a floo place.

"You can come out now," Cassa informed, shaking out her arms.

It was a minute until he stood and shuffled out of the corner, whipping his head around to see if the man was somehow still there.

"Thank you," the boy said, stifling the lump in his throat, "thank you."

If she hadn't lied to him, then Harry had no idea what would happen. A harangue, yes, but he'd also likely be shipped back to his relatives. He shivered at the thought.

She smiled politely much like how she had smiled at Snape, "Well, I wouldn't want that man to be looking for me either."

He nodded, still feeling dizzy and weak despite how much his heart was thumping against his rib cage.

She quickly returned to her cool demeanor, "Are you going to tell me or Tom what's going on?"

Harry shook his head, dismissing himself to his rented room and rubbing at the bite that pounded along with his chest.

He crawled in bed despite it only being early afternoon, tired and justifying the laziness with the fact that he'd done too much thinking today.

It was only a little while until he started dreaming.

_More than anything else, Harry loved those gleaming pair of eyes, and whenever they paused to give him a long look, it was as if soft velvet meadows crawled up the small of his back and came to tickle the base of his neck. Those eyes, those eyes were the perfect eyes framed with rows of dark lashes._

_It was those eyes that had made him forget about the three men and the old woman he had seen earlier, it was those eyes that sent a pleasurable rush of blood to his groin._

_Harry broke away from those eyes hesitantly, vision trailing down to a thin, pointed nose that further dropped down into pale pink lips. There was a tap at his chin as soon as his eyes slid down the man's strong neck and to his collarbone, and he was forced to look up again at the color of ripe mangoes, "I have something to say to you, my dear."_

_The boy straightened up, bringing his face closer to his right ear holding back several dark, curly locks._

_A soft breath lingered over his throat and made it pulse pleasantly, long fingers feeling the texture of his cheek as if riveted before moseying to his neck. Gently yet firmly, those fingers squeezed at his jugular. Those eyes tickled his neck, pinned to the swell of blood below the skin like rushing white rapids, before the man leaned forward and brought his mouth to Harry's neck._

_The boy giggled as the man's warm, large hands traveled away from his neck and rested at the base of his stomach, gently rolling his abdomen right above his belt buckle. Unwittingly, he bared more of his neck to those soft kisses, feeling the man's leg rub in between his._

_He let out a breathy moan, the man pressing his hardness against-_

Harry awoke with a gasp, twisting himself hard against the sheets and feeling a brief disorientation before remembering he had taken a nap. What added to his confusion was the blanket of darkness that covered the entire room; he had obviously slept past sunset, and with this in mind he started clumsily untangling himself from the sweaty sheets.

It took him a moment to realize how tightly his crotch was pushed against his jeans, and he groaned lightly when he inadvertently rubbed himself against the pillows. Lost in the haze of pleasure, he pushed himself even harder against the sheets and felt oddly turned on by the stickiness in his boxers. It was when he started unzipping his jeans and letting them sink below his hips that he remembered just what had turned him on in the first place.

He flinched, pulling his hand away with a flaming red face as he remembered the strong, lean body pushing against him. His eyes grew half lidded, tongue peeking out of his partially opened mouth when another dose of pleasure funneled straight to his groin.

And then he recoiled once again, zipping up his sweat dripped and sticky jeans despite how uncomfortable they were before heading straight to a cold shower.

He could never like someone who attacked him, never. That'd be like falling in love with Voldemort!

And he liked girls, no matter what the pounding of his bite told him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing, sexual things
> 
> (a/n) There is a dream sequence at the very beginning of this chapter. Thanks to all the readers, reviewers, subscribers, etc!

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

_The vampire knew full-well the human was not the most attractive young boy, looking oddly lanky and unkempt. He was much too thin and gawky and hadn't yet grown out of the childlike quality to his face and body that receded into the bagginess of his clothes; his forehead was perpetually scrunched in a sort of agitation, and they too receded under choppy bangs._

_That's also likely why it was the strangest sort of sensation when he laid his eyes on the boy, and felt it. He felt drawn to it. Drawn to the unrivaled silkiness of black hair that dawdled until curtaining down over small ears, drawn then to the greenness of his eyes that led to faintly convex cheeks. Those cheeks then scurried to a supple and faintly feminine curve defining his jaw line, running to an even softer neck._

_And when his eyes halted at the collar of his robes, the vampire felt the immediate need to take those clothes off and look at what was underneath._

_The next thing he knew his own hands were sliding over the boy's back and calculating the surface variations, like the long spine dipping in and out of the skin, the curvy, delicate little waist, and suddenly strong hips he longed to dance over with his fingertips._

_It was perhaps the most rewarding experience he had even known when he felt the boy writhing against his hands, little green eyes encumbered when they found the courage to meet his own, and the vampire could have sworn he had almost felt his own lips twitch._

_And then, right then, those eyes dropped from his own, to his nose, lips, and swept over his collarbone. The vampire stifled the irritated growl rising from the very base of his throat, and tapped the boy's chin firmly upwards, "I have something to say to you, my dear."_

_The boy straightened up immediately and brought himself closer to the vampire, the obedience pleasing the elder man infinitely._

_He faced the boy more frontally, letting a wavering, warm breath coat the boy's throat for a moment, and sliding his hands slowly over his body. He leaned forward, poking at his jugular and watching the blood rise, letting his tongue spill out of his mouth at the pulsing of his member when the boy bared more of his languorous neck._

_His hands trailed more confidently over firmly over the boy's body, slipping from his lower back to the base of his abdomen and rolling the soft tissue under his fingers._

_For a moment, he had thought about biting the offered neck, nearly groaning at the thought of how sweet it would taste, yet decided instead to leaving feathery light kisses at the base and collarbone, noting the beauty marks dotting the surface._

_He felt the boy's hardness pressing against his own when their two bodies grew closer together, making him push forward and place his leg in between the boy's legs, rubbing softly against him and hearing a pleased moan-_

The vampire awoke, eyes instantly adjusting to the darkness as his pupils flared outwards and encompassed his entire iris. The mahogany frame of his bed creaked when he slipped out of it, sliding to the floor on all fours and tensing as if ready to pounce.

It was late night, the taste of it approximately midnight, likely 11:52, and peculiarly chilly for a summer evening- twelve degrees Celsius.

He narrowed his eyes, turning completely still and silhouetted enough that he could have passed as a piece of furniture. That is, if his eyes didn't reflect the available light and gleam an ominous yellow.

He shifted inaudibly, vision sweeping from one object to another, resting intermittently from one wall to another.

Nothing.

Nothing moved besides the constant swinging of the pendulum inside of his grandfather clock on the farthest wall.

He ascended to his feet, realizing that there were no intruders, and even if there was than the Palace Guards would have swiftly killed them the second they tried to set foot into the building.

How curious it was, he would have sworn in Circe's name that he had seen a boy-

He blinked, mind flooding with decaying memories of green eyes, hair, and kissable collarbones. He shuddered at the pulsing just under his abdomen. He remembered that boy, he killed that boy himself. With his own two teeth.

There was no possible way the boy would have been in His room, having intimate tête-à-tête with him; he was dead!

A realization thrummed in his head; a dream. It was only a dream. He almost staggered back in surprise.

How many years had it been since he'd had a dream? Fifty, a hundred or so? And he ended dreaming about a lowly human? About food? He had lusty thoughts about a dead, average-looking human?

Yes, average at best. Average looking hair and constantly quirked eyebrows, average looking lips and pointed nose that had a small freckle slightly to the left of its bridge, average looking neck and average looking collarbone that slithered down to an average looking, white expanse of chest-

The Vampire Lord immediately recoiled, shivering when he became cognizant of his own... of his own... désir; lust!

How utterly disgusting! It made him want to retch that he was even still thinking about a human for any other use than a quick meal. How could his wretched mind have prioritized a boy so much that he ended up having his first dream in who knows how long?

Why, the last dream he had was prophetic about the revival of a vampire hunting movement by the Tsar in the Russian Empire! And that wasn't half as vivid as this dream!

How curious. It was almost if that human was somehow, someway, important. Yet how? And why did the nebulous entity that seemed to forewarn him of certain events feel it was necessary to impart this to him? The human was dead, whatever was going to happen earlier, if it even meant something at all, wasn't going to happen now.

Strange.

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	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

For most people, August went by much too quickly, and the moment the First clocked in, a mad frenzy would settle like silt over the students. August was a countdown of sorts- the last month until school started, the last month of blithe freedom, and the last month to pack in another vacation to some exotic land.

For Harry, the month had trickled by slowly. The month marked the passing of an lurching stream roller trying to get uphill with no traction. It was a month without momentum, a month without motion, and a month with a singular beacon that loomed unnoticed in the distant horizon. The only resemblance his August had to his fellow students' was the countdown, but that too felt like grains of rice trying to pass through too small a funnel.

In the past, August's had always been a series of questions. Firstly, will the bruises have enough time to heal before the start of term? Secondly, are there enough cauldron cakes hidden underneath the floorboard to last the month? And lastly, will I make it?

Now, even without him stuck to the Dursleys' side like a parasite, he still thought of August in terms of those questions. The only way he could justify his unnecessary hoarding of food, the daily check for dark purple spots dotting his arms, and surreptitious glances he threw to possible escape exits whenever he entered a room, was by dubbing it mere force of habit.

He didn't know why this month made him feel so spineless and itchy, but it always felt like there was a static-quality to the air and that the clouds were always lined with dark rims. August was the type of quiet that occurred before thunder would break out.

Yet, despite his looming paranoia, life in Diagon Alley passed as normally for Harry as it always did, sometimes approaching yet never quite touching the first few, peaceful days in which he had arrived. He would wake up, get ready, greet the maids, eat, stop by a book store and peruse, before going back to his rented room to count the holes in the ceiling; starting the whole cycle over again the very next day.

Nothing deviated from what it was supposed to be, and that made it easy for Harry to forget. It made it easy for him to wash away in routine, and ignore the increasing frequency of the pounding in his bite, ignore the headaches that threatened to cripple him when he stood outside in the sun for too long, and ignore his decreasing appetite.

It will go away. It's okay. Nothing's happening- those were a few of the favorite phrases his head would dish out whenever he felt the inclination to do something about it.

It was only made slightly harder when the maids would approach him, scrutinizing the lines in his face, and wringing their hands in their aprons, say: "You look so sick, maybe you should be staying in bed!"

And he would say, fighting against the lingering horror in the back of his mind, "I think I've only got a little cold."

Some August days, when the clouds looked more heavy than others, and zapping in the air felt more pronounced, Harry would take a moment to entertain the idea of slinking back to Knockturn Alley- just for a little while- just to see if he could find the book he wanted. And it would only take another second for his mind to shoot that down, saying he shouldn't entertain silly ideas about a Kindling and vampires!

He had gone through the thought pattern every morning and evening, like it was a scheduled routine, and it was a pleasant reprieve one morning when he had been awoken by something banging against the windows and not by those thoughts.

He had slumped forward into a sitting position, rubbing at the last remnants of sleep in his eyes, and dozily padded to the window on the far left wall. Pulling the curtains back, he was greeted by three owls carrying multiple parcels a little too heavy for them.

He opened his window wide, letting a very small one- who he later realized was Pig- in, and the rest came trailing after.

It took a full three minutes to untie all of the letter bedecking their legs and when he recognized the handwriting he waved each of them out of the window and away.

The first one was in terse handwriting,

_Harry,_

_You better tell an adult where you are RIGHT NOW! I swear if you're just going on some sort of completely idiotic adventure than I'll never talk to you again. Everyone is worried about you, including me, you idiot! Do you have any idea what you are doing? Even Dumbledore can't find you!_

_Please, please, Harry, at least respond to this letter so I know you're not missing or dead!_

_Hermione_

_Harry swallowed tensely, pushing the letter aside in favor of the next one._

_Harry,_

_Hey mate... mom's super worried about you and stuff; can't get anything done! Where are you?_

_Dumbledore came to... to where Hermione and I am at, uh, right now, you know I can't talk about it... anyways, I think I heard something about you being missing. Or whatever._

_Please, tell us, tell me, where you are... you have no idea how ballistic Hermione is going right now. If she knew you were safe maybe she wouldn't have destroyed my chess set._

_At least reply, I want to hear all about what adventure you're leaving me out on!_

_Ron_

_The boy sighed._

_Harold Potter,_

_Hey! Fred here, where are ya, I just wanted to know how you wer-_

_George says hi_

_Give me back the pen, Forge_

_You got it, Gred_

_What sort of super scheme-ery and prank-ishness are you holding out on us?_

_Yeah! Tell us_

_Where you_

_are_

_and what you_

_are doing_

_-Also, don't be surprised if mum handcuffs you to her own arm when you get here_

_Gred and Forge_

The other letters he received, each one getting progressively more cringe-worthy than the one before, were from various members of what they called The Order, but by far the worst letters to read were Mrs. Weasley's and Sirius'.

Not only did they succeed in making a colossal guilt weigh on his chest like gathering sediments, but they had almost, almost, made him bring a quill to a clean piece of parchment and jot a note just to say that he was okay.

It was when a curious Hedwig poked her head over the perch and blinked at him with curious eyes that Harry rethought that strategy. If Dumbledore and his 'Order' got wind of it, they could potentially find him and cart him back to the Dursleys'.

It was a small chance but he couldn't risk it. Unsurprisingly, it was that train of thought which later kept the gnawing desire to venture back into Knockturn Alley at bay.

It wasn't until the very last week of August that thoughts about shady bookstores had reentered his head.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing

Harry had spent the last day in Diagon Alley within the Leaky Cauldron, his activities ranging everywhere from sloppily reorganizing his trunk to crawling back in his rented bed and pulling the sheets over his head.

It was a hot, musky sort of day, being humid enough that the moisture of the air made him want to seep through the cracks in the floor. It negated any sense of the excitement he would've felt by going back to Hogwarts, and he had completely forgot about the rusticated stone walls, the rolling pastures that disappeared in the horizon infinitely, and the secret magic that crackled in the air. Especially when he thought his friends.

How angry would they be with him? He had wondered, cosying even further into the sheets despite the abominable heat; how long would it be until Hermione would talk to him again? Would she ever forgive him?

He nibbled on his lip, drowning seamlessly under the liquid mercury of his thoughts when he thought about Snape, Dumbledore, Remus, Sirius and Mrs. Weasley. The wet oxygen didn't relieve this feeling, instead only agitating the heaviness of his chest and his insurmountable laziness.

Harry could just imagine it- twiddling his thumbs at platform 9 and 3/4 with the sun beating down on him- and Mrs. Weasley would be there, too, with hunched shoulders and crossed arms, tapping one pudgy foot forward when she rushed Ron, the twins, and Ginny in.

The boy dozed from the warmth under the covers, feeling slightly uncomfortable as the heat bordered on becoming stifling, and further wondering what would happen.

And she'd stop, and see him with tired eyes, reeling because she couldn't believe it, and there he'd be, close to passing out and only able to give her one long blink, before she'd give him one bone-crushing hug and proceed to slap him on the side of the head. Telling him he was an idiot , an absolute fool, for making her and everybody else worry- without even giving a note of explanation! She'd cross her arms again, scrunching her sleeves in her clenched fists, frowning in red hot hate, and she'd tell him he was a freak and, oh boy, he was going to get it- he was going to get it this time- for what he did to Dudley, that freak!, for what he did- and she'd punch him and freak, freak, freak- and- teeth and-

Harry jolted up from out of the covers, rousing himself from half-consciousness and slipping out from his bed. He rubbed at his chest, taking a slow, deep breath to calm himself and shake from his musing. He was sure she'd never do that, or any of his friends, no matter how mad he made them.

His eyes settled on the analog clock hanging crookedly on the far wall, vision resting along the lower rim of the glass frame before slowly piecing together the time. It was one, and he had yet to leave the room.

He then proceeded to get dressed, throwing on whatever he could find from his trunk and packing the rest without folding them. He glided in the wide halls, no longer deterred by the questionable state of the Inn and, as per usual, sat down until a menu appeared and, five minutes later, a full meal.

Fried red kidney beans topped with a hearty helping of sauteed mushrooms and a small cup of what smelled like Earl Grey tea. It took him a full minute to pick up his fork, shoveling gently at the beans and digging into one, hovering the utensil around his mouth and shuddering at the smell. He slopped it back onto the plate, choosing instead to wait until it would start to appear appetizing.

He didn't know how long he sat there waiting, tapping his fingers along the cracked ceramic edge of the cup and finding himself able to drink it only because the flavor was so bitter and mute that it didn't make him automatically queasy at the thought of it.

Harry searched through his memory, trying to convince himself that yesterday he had eaten a particularly big meal, yet not finding it within himself to continue that lie.

His disinterest in food was starting to become dangerous. At least at the Dursleys' he ate whenever he could, and could feel consoled at the fact that his physical state was not caused by himself.

The boy frowned. He was not hungry for food.

The bite on his neck pounded.

He found himself wanting again. His head thrummed along with it, the smothered desire within himself to know, to find out, his very nature that refused quite plainly to stifled- the fervent and unstoppable heat of curiosity- made him get out of his seat and leave the meal, growing cold, still on the table.

He needed to go to Knockturn. He needed to find out what was happening to him. Yet he stopped right at the brick entrance, wavering backward and patting the flame within himself once again, regaining his mind if only for a moment.

There was no way he could do that. He was rushing into things without thinking about it first, and that's what got him into trouble in the very first place. If he went back, there's no telling what he'd see this time which he may or may not be able to escape from. The boy had met three drunkards and an insane old lady on his first visit, along with that man, and even him coming out alive could have been the triumph of luck. It would be equally plausible to meet something even more deadly than on that night.

Think, Harry, think. And so he leaned back, out of the way of the brick entrance and padded back to his room to nap until the next coming morning. He could always look in the Hogwarts' library if he needed to, and that would be much safer than heading to Knockturn for a page he didn't even know existed.

Harry clenched and unclenched his fist. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe he'd be hungrier tomorrow.

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The next morning was a frenzy of activity, not only by himself, but by what seemed all of Diagon Alley. Even the normally cool-headed Tom seemed on edge when Harry bolted down the stairs, making the stairs click-click-click when his packed suitcase banged against the edges of the wooden steps, and the boy could have sworn that if he payed a little bit more attention he would have seen the elder man jump.

But, he only saw it in the very corner of his eye, and so did the rest of the occupants when they scurried to leave or clean and bounce out through the brick entryway. September 1st hailed a new era not for just students, yet for what seemed all wizards.

The boy stepped forward, digging for galleons out of his pocket and dumping them nervously onto the counter in front of the man, waiting for him to count them.

He made no motion to count and stretched out his shirt, cupping the money with the large cloth and funneling them into a bucket behind him, "It's been a pleasure having you, take care of yourself, will ya?"

Harry nodded dismissively, heading whirring back and forth to see if he could find the time, and he looked indecisive, "Tell Cassa I said bye, and that I'll visit sometime soon."

The elder man nodded one single jerk of the head, watching him immediately spin the opposite direction and out of the Leaky Cauldron for the first time since he had arrived.

When Harry made it out the door, he paced quickly to a less crowded and less noticeable corner of Muggle London, fiddling with the lint on his robes and whispering confusedly, "I'm a stranded wizard; Knight bus..."

A moment later it appeared, so much more searingly red that he blinked rapidly just to get the after-image out from his head, and a familiar Stan Shunpike waited by the entrance, "Fare is...," he paused, continuing to chew on some sort of pungent taffy, "Ey! I know you, you were, you were 'ere in July, right?"

Harry nodded, peeking his head over the man's shoulder into the bus, before giving the man two galleons, "Can I go in now?"

Stan nodded with pursed lips, gesturing grandly just like how he had last time Harry was on the bus; yet the boy had barely remembered it because last time, he had been too shaky to truly notice the man's actions.

"Where to?"

He stepped on, this time gripping even more tightly at the edge of his seat and avoiding any incidences of slamming his face into the window, "King's Cross, please."

The bus zipped through narrow streets, "Hogwarts student, I suppose?"

The boy nodded, ignoring the ache that had set in his bones, which he had blamed on his bad sleep.

Sooner than he would've liked, he was shooed out of the bus, watching it disappear with a vague frown, and mustered the energy to dodge through large crowds of people with his empty cage and bursting suitcase.

He was met with a brick column between nine and ten that looked smaller than he had remembered and ran right through it onto an even more busy platform 9 and 3/4.

The train had not yet allowed anyone on.

He put his trunk down and sat atop it, straddling Hedwig's empty cage between his legs and awkwardly resting his chin on top of it. Briefly, he closed his eyes, getting lost in the sway of people and meaningless chatter, until he was abruptly pulled up so harshly his sense of balance was thrown aside.

Someone had grasped his arms and opening his eyes, he stared blinking at a fuming Professor Snape. There was a long, pregnant pause that seemed to continue between the both of them, the elder man frowning dourly, one corner of his upper lip raised in contempt, before deep-set black eyes pierced through his own like he was being strung on a kabob.

Harry blinked rapidly in a futile effort to throw off the man's gaze, "Professor..."

The man examined his pale face, not allowing him to get another word in when he gripped the boy's arm even harder, "Don't you dare speak to me, Potter, I will allow no excuses as to your inherent idiocy. Do you have any idea how long Dumbledore, his allies, and myself have been forced to find you and drag you back like a mindless puppy?"

He swallowed.

"Not only have you drawn away our attention from more important research," the man paused, subtly catching his breath, "But you have led many of your friends and mutt into believing you may be dead. At this point, your arrogance and stupidity astounds even myself, seeming to have broken a barrier of ignorance that I had, prior from now, not known existed."

The man's shoulders raised and lowered quickly as if he had just taken some heaving breath, the redness of his usually sallow face speaking volumes of his anger. He looked like a thin and more articulate version of Uncle Vernon, especially considering the way he grasped at the boy's arm.

The boy opened his mouth, wanting to get his word in.

"There is no way you could possibly have an worthwhile or riveting excuse as to your act of brazen stupidity, so I will not allow you to speak for the duration of the train ride and, since you seem to have no conceivable way of staying where you're supposed to be," the man audibly gritted his teeth, causing Harry to twitch, "You will be under my surveillance until you get to the Welcoming Feast, and further until your Professors and I can be assured you won't take any more vacations."

He was dragged onto the train and knew instantly that, with the sun beaming straight through the train windows and a timid looking Hermione, following by Ron and his siblings, that he was in for a very long ride.

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	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

HpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

Harry blinked, raising his face to the surface of the window, to look out an uncertain Hermione trailed by Ron, Ginny, Fred and George, despite the uncomfortable heat and pain that rose to his face.

The girl was leaning forward and back, every now and again taking cautious steps forward and rising to the tips of her toes to scan the heads in the crowd. Ron followed her lead, sometimes tapping at her arm, pointing towards a specific black-haired person, and disappointing everybody when that chosen person turned around.

The five would flit like hummingbirds from individual to individual, stopping to briefly question fellow Gryffindors and lean their heads in really closely to hang onto the every word. Many shook their heads, others shrugged their shoulders and some would squint their eyes and narrow their focus for a second- making Hermione especially more attentive- before mouthing 'No, I haven't seen him'.

At one point, Ron had excitedly grasped her arm, giving a particularly toothy grin before the both of them rushed off towards a stocky, black-haired boy that had glasses which took up his full face.

Harry pushed himself even more against the window, blinking with a growing sense of terror when she hugged the unknown boy from behind, likely thinking that it just had to be Harry.

As he had expected, the boy violently recoiled, turning towards her with a scrunched brow, and firmly planting his square rimless glasses over a very pudgy nose. A very pudgy nose and brown eyes that weren't Harry's own.

Ron stepped forward, shrugging and mouthing something along the lines of, "We thought you were someone else."

Through the window, even with sun tilting directly in his burning eyes, and casting a yellow, washed-out glow on the whole station, he could see her. Her back was faced towards him and with all too startling clarity, he watched as she took a hesitant step backwards, shoulders dropping like dead stones, and then heaving up and down like the line of a heart monitor measuring the pulse of an old, dying man. Her shoulders sped, trembling for a very long few seconds, before they flatlined and the heart monitor would let out a long, drawing and cold beep. And in his metaphor, the old man would be dead.

He pulled away when he couldn't withstand the pain of the sun any longer and, if he were entirely honest with himself, the weightiness of his guilt. And yet her trembling and, at other times, complete stillness repeated over and over in his head as if branded onto his pupils.

In an after image that glowed in his head, he could imagine her stepping even farther back from the boy, her smile disappearing like smoke from an open jar. Ron would step forward, pat her back in an odd attempt to either console her or get her attention.

The boy would mutely prod her, trying to get her to continue to scan the crowd, but she wouldn't and for the first time since she had entered the station, her eyes would sink to the ground as a corpse did in water.

The twins and Ginny would catch up to her, asking if she had found him, she would shake her head, and Fred would attempt to get her to laugh. She would have none of it.

This time, Harry's eyes burned from something separate from the sun, and he blinked rapidly when his vision started to blur over. He supposed it was a little bit of a miracle that Snape either didn't notice or didn't feel the need to comment on it.

He shut his eyes, slinking even farther back into his own seat and entertaining the possibility of rushing out the train, shaking her by the arms and letting her know he was alive. He paused, waiting awkwardly until Snape's eyes met his own, pointing out the window of the compartment, "Can I?"

"No," the man immediately shot down, with the briefest twitch of his lips.

The boy didn't feel like arguing and remained silent, even though both tasks were against his very Gryffindorish nature.

He rested against the seat, feeling with every molecule of his very being that it was wrong, and the next time he shot straight up was only a minute or so later when he heard footsteps through the narrow halls of the train and the repeated word: "Harry."

Their voices were muffled, "Has anyone seen Harry Potter?" And as they got closer to his own compartment, he sat up straighter and more frozen in his seat, peeking his head nearer to the door to listen to the sounds.

Snape regarded his pleading look, the man pursing his lips and forcing his way out of the compartment while shutting the door behind him.

The boy put his ear all the way up against the door, trying to seize every word. He heard Snape tap impatiently, imaging that he was gesturing towards himself at the boy's friends with a look of supreme irritation.

He heard footsteps and, not a moment later, frantic questioning, until Hermione's voice shushed them all- "Is he with you, sir? Is he?"

The man didn't say anything, yet Harry could imagine that he had given her an impatient nod.

As soon as that silent admission was made, the boy could feel the immediate relief in the atmosphere; "And he's okay?"

"Yes."

Relieved chuckles broke out; "Can we see him, Sir?"

It sounded like Ron's voice, but Harry almost reeled violently in disbelief at how sugary and polite it sounded.

The floor of the train creaked when the man stepped back and, suddenly, before the boy even had time to stand up and prepare himself, a rush of people huddled into the compartment and crushed him instantly.

If took a moment for his churning brain to realize that he wasn't being attacked and his body was not being crushed in a trash disposal, and an equally long pause to understand that the sudden and clawing arms that covered him were, in fact, quite simply, in short, hugging him.

His face swelled with heat and guilt and happiness, and he was suddenly no longer bothered by the claustrophobia and the heat, "I'm okay, guys, I'm okay."

Hermione held him at arm's length, examining his thin nose and green eyes and assuring herself that it was actually him, "Where were you?"

That was the first thing she said.

The boy swallowed at the tightness of his throat, letting the words froth out of his mouth, "I was in Diagon Alley."

The rest of the occupants frowned, yet Hermione looked perhaps the most confused, as if she wasn't able to process what she had just heard, "What?"

Her voice was strained like someone without a mouth trying to talk, and the compartment was so quiet and still, that he could hear the roar of chatter and the drop of a needle in the two adjacent compartments. He barely had time to take a breath, opening his mouth again only to be interrupted.

"You were in Diagon Alley? All this time? This whole time while Dumbledore, everyone," she paused, dropping her voice to a whisper, "The Order, was looking so hard to find you- and that's where you were? And that's where no one could find you? And that's where you were- safe? And ignoring us?"

Nobody spoke.

Hermione's shoulders trembled, raising very high against her neck as if pulled up by two strings, "How could you be so stupid? And so inconsiderate? How could you do that to me? Why?"

She was waiting for his reply, and Harry's eyes roamed from face to face, looking and feeling profoundly lost in a place he thought was familiar, "Can we talk about this later? Please? Please, not now."

No one moved forward except for Ron, who rested his hand briefly on the girl's shoulder even when she tried to shake it off. He gave her a long look, and in a whisper, as if Harry wasn't there, he said: "'Mione, I think it has to do with _Them_ ; you know," he paused, mouthing what he said next, " _His relatives_."

She blinked at him, the weight of his words not sinking in until she looked back at the boy, anger replaced with something else entirely. She frowned, brows knitting together, "Oh, Harry."

A red, rapid heat rose to the boy's face and he looked down towards his feet, pulling up the collar of his robes at her searching look, and everyone else seemed baffled by the exchange.

It was then that Snape chose to rush everyone out of the compartment, not including Harry himself, and this was met with very strong protest until the professor threatened them with a full month of detention.

As the train took off towards Hogwarts, most of the ride was awkward and tense, excluding a small exchange between them that occurred at what seemed an hour or so later.

"Who are _them_?" the man had asked deliberately.

The question was so unexpected that it took the boy a full minute to understand what he was talking about, "None of your business, that's who."

"Your arrogance precedes you, Potter, a trait shared by your equally mediocre father."

The boy swallowed, standing abruptly, "Don't say a word."

Snape spelled a lock on the door, quirking an eyebrow in question.

"I'm not a kid, I don't need a lock! Or a supervisor!"

Narrowed eyes and a mutinous look, "Do you have short term memory loss or are you just daft? By the looks of it, both. Do you not remember your little expedition?"

"Don't talk about what you don't know," Harry sat back down, huffing in a conspiratorial way as the countryside rolled along and the tufts of smoke from the train darkened the sky, "I left for my own purposes."

They hadn't talked again after that.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

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The Welcoming Feast went by just the same as it did all other years, he sat by his friends at Gryffindor Table, Neville trailing along behind them, the professors all sat in their respective places, the regular speeches were given welcoming the new and old students, and all the same classic dishes were on the table.

Yet, something felt different, and Harry couldn't place what it was. Maybe it was how his friends kept throwing furtive and concerned glances to him- which wasn't that much different from last year, since they had always been suspicious about his 'treatment' under his uncle, yet this time, his professors had also joined in the act. It was unnerving, the moment he had walked in with Snape in tow, trying unsuccessfully to slink away to his table until halfway through the hall, they had all stood very tall to look over him, including Hagrid who had made the empty dishes rattle across the whole dining table.

Harry had at least expected this sort of reaction, after all they were apart of the 'Order' that Dumbledore and Snape had alluded to, and they likely knew of his missing status, yet he couldn't have expected that they'd remain tense and watchful over the duration of the feast.

Whenever he dared to throw a look back, he could tell and even feel how hard they were clenching their dinnerware, especially McGonagall, who had squeezed the knife so tight it looked like her fingers were going to burst under the pressure.

He had quickly looked away when his eyes curiously traveled up to her face, not even managing a sheepish look at the tightness of her brows that rivaled that tightness of her grip.

Aside from the unnerving and, at times, irritating, looks, the feast had also presented some deeply foreboding differences. Dumbledore had started his yearly speech, interrupted with a nasally 'hem-hem' and the man had confusedly, yet affably, stepped down, waiting for the source of the noise to speak.

Uhm-wedge, Uhmbrick, Umbride- it seemed, whatever her name was, had stood, the blaring pinkness of her outfit making Harry blink several times, with a voice that had a similar honeyed characteristic. A very bitter honey.

"Thank you, Headmaster, for those kind words of welcome, and how lovely it is to see your bright, shining faces all looking up at me..."

That made Harry stop listening altogether, cringing at the sound.

It was later when the food appeared, steaming and delicate and rich-looking, that Harry nonetheless found the numerous sticky rice cakes, ham and pork and all the meats under the sun, asparagus with a smattering of hot butter, plain toast, and treacle tarts- even treacle tarts- very unappetizing. The smell was unsavory, if not downright rotten, and yet it wafted all around him and drowned the room in the same stench that made him shake with nausea.

It was with superior control of the mind that he managed to not outright clamp his hand to his mouth and gag into it, instead coolly patting at his face with the napkin only managing to choke down a plain, burnt piece of toast.

He needed to eat real food, he needed nutrients, that's what his brain thought. Yet somewhere deep down in the very depths of his mind, somewhere that instead acted on instinct and didn't know the meaning of rationality, somewhere his mind pulsed with a different thought and a different feeling. And that was the part of him that spoke, almost inaudibly, yet definitely there: It's not human food I want.

It made his leg twitch upward and hit the table, rattling the dishes on it, and make everyone give him an irritated look before going back to their food.

He was changing, and he knew it. He was changing very quickly. And he didn't know how, but he knew it was for the worse.

The infinite hole in his mind spoke again: soon.

He had to stop it.

He couldn't even remember how the rest of the feast went.

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The first week passed on just as usually as the four others he had in his history of being a student, sluggish and yet exciting, but this year it was without it's usual spark. This year he didn't feel that sense of security he'd always had when distancing himself from the Dursleys', which was the main reason he'd grown fond the towering turrets and scuffed portraits that extended above his head infinitely. Or so it seemed, at least when he was in first year.

This was supposed to be a week that would reaffirm in his mind that he had made it, somewhat unscathed, that he was here and he didn't have anything to worry about until the summer months would reapproach like a looming storm cloud.

However, now it was different, a feeling that had not disappeared and stuck with him ever since the Welcoming Feast. The problem was no longer outside the castle, and outside the barrier made by the thick stone slabs, the problem was right beside him and right within him.

The problem was his friends and their questions, rushing right to his side as if attached at the hip, and they would say: "You said we would talk about it,", and "Are you okay?", and the most irritating question that would ultimately follow, "And you're sure you're okay?"

The problem was the professors and the inscrutable looks they would give him, as if trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle.

And most of all, the problem was himself. Something was happening to him. Something was changing within himself; it was a problem that, at some points, lingered on the horizon and at other points, whispered in his right ear. Yet at both times, he knew it was there.

One evening, he had awoken in the dorm room, not able to fall back asleep, and he decided to burrow himself into the little niche with the window that, like many other things, seemed a lot bigger when he was eleven.

The hills were silhouetted in blackness, and his eyes trailed along the delicate curve of the rolls and hilts that dotted the land- land that would rise and droop as if it were the stomach of a sleeping giant.

The blades of grass at the very top of the hills would meet with the sky, deep blackness touching a lighter, more gray shade intermittently dotted with stars like pinpricks through a sheet of fabric.

He loved it there, in the niche almost too small to fit him, he loved it a lot more than how he used to drag a night table to the window with creaky, broken black bars, and stand on it, trying to peek his small head to the little crack. The roofs of the cookie cutter houses would always obstruct the night sky, clashing at odds with it, because such a building was meant to keep the night out, and even then he could ever see much.

At Hogwarts, it was the opposite, the foundation breathed the very essence of the night, letting it seep through cracks and unlit dorms and through windows so thin and tall that they almost didn't exist. And there were no lights, and the only thing that could ever get in the way of the stars was the wispy little clouds who also loved the night.

And now, hunching his head and letting his breath fog over the glass, he realized with startling clarity that it had changed to. That the niche was too small to support himself anymore. And the night now welcomed something different from peace.

His bite pounded faster and with more pain than it usually had.

He curled into himself, stepping down and back to his bed to pull the red curtains over his four-poster bed, falling into a restless sleep interrupted only a few hours later.

_The Vampire gingerly patted the boy's waist, long arms encircling him and resting his chin atop his head, "And you're ready?"_

_"Yes, yes, I am," Harry said, his voice a breathy whisper into the man's chest as he tried to step backward into the darkness, yet the arms burrowed him even farther into the vampire, "Please."_

_"Careful, young one, do not let your teeth think for your brain," the man warned, "Control yourself, savor your meal."_

_The boy felt his teeth pulse and expand as the vampire gently prodding the scar on his neck, the smell of a human making him try to push away from the man who only responded by gripping tighter._

_Harry was pushed back and turned towards the cobbled streets, his body lingering just barely over the edge of alleyway, "Which one smells the best, little Raven?"_

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	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

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It was 1:40 am and four seconds, approximately a balmy fifteen degrees Celsius, and within one-hundred kilometers, there existed a few hundred suitable meals which the vampire could order his servants to retrieve for him. If he so desired, that is.

However, it was a particularly odd evening for him, this evening at- now, 1:41 am and thirty or so seconds- he felt quite dreary and unusually exhausted.

He sniffed the air again, wondering if his senses proved wrong and that it was perhaps 5:00 am, or some other time that would justify his tiredness. Alas, they were never wrong- he was never wrong- and yet he sat, wilting in the cushions like grass without water, and dozing as he read the confidential report about the recent skirmishes along the borders of the Czech Republic. Fueled, of course, by the surge in population of his kind.

Official royal duties were never seasoned to his liking, yet this too could not account for the exhaustion pressing against him. And neither did it account for the other changes which had been rapidly redefining his character and temperament, as of late.

He clicked the sharp point of his teeth together, gritting softly, and moved his chair over to the expanse of window just behind his head and forgetting the report that laid on his desk.

The night was as deep and black as any other, burgeoning with life that threatened to teem over the hills and encroach on his territory, and so quiet he could hear his eyelids meld together whenever he blinked.

It was an alive night, a night that should have electrified him, a night he should've sensed the pulsing of each individual heart in the valley, and a night he should've been indulging in.

And yet he was tired and achy and bored, and felt as if a piece of himself was missing and yet to be found. He was not hungry, or thirsty, or penniless, without tasks he could be doing, or even without the night; and yet he longed for something more. He longed for a sensation that was palpable, like a sort of invisible steam that would collect on his skin, that he could feel, that he knew with every fibre of his being was there, yet he had no way of catching. And he didn't even know what it was, but the ache of yearning had existed ever since that Night, with the boy.

The vampire sunk further into his chair, running a hand busily through his curly locks, and blinked half-lidded at the stars.

The night had changed, it had left him bereft. Or, maybe it was him who had changed.

He couldn't help how his head slumped against the armrest, and how he fell into a deep, yet quickly interrupted sleep.

_His fingers laced themselves in the boy's hair, encircling his arms around the boy's waist greedily, and placing his chin over the top of his head like a crow looking for danger, "And you're ready?"_

_"Yes, yes, I am," the boy said, breathing with a husk against the vampire's chest, and trying to detach himself gently before the man only pulled him in father in a fit of possession; "Please."_

_"Careful, young one, do not let your teeth think for your brain," he admonished, "Control yourself, savor your meal."_

_The man continued to grasp him with multiple calculations going off in his brain, considering the probability of risk to what was his and strategically mapping out the safest routes his young one could take in order to suitably displace harm._

_The boy pushed away, toeing the line between the alley and the cobbled streets before the vampire asked, "Which one smells the best, little Raven?"_

The moment he awoke, his consciousness was attacked with information. 3:13 am and five seconds. Seventeen degrees Celsius; no, incorrect, still fifteen degrees Celsius; minor causal shift in atmospheric pressure resulting in increased bodily temperature without true change in heat.

His gums pulsed, teeth shredding through the soft tissue with such force it caused him to flinch backwards and propel himself out of the seat. He dropped to the floor on all fours, deliberately scaling and pausing, spitting at the acrid taste of his own blood in his mouth and feeling his pupils dilate to encompass his entire iris.

He was fully energized.

The very moment he had let in the first inhale of breath, the smell had almost overwhelmed him so greatly to the point he staggered onto his back.

That scent, that scent, the subtle scent of the sepals that peeled from not-quite-blooming roses in early May, the fragrance of cinnamon and crushed rosemary, the most familiar smell on earth-

He knew it. He knew that smell.

He had smelt it before.

And now, it was there, ready to greet him once more with it's delicate, sanguine taste. It was that smell of, of-

A disjointed memory went off in his brain, holding still for a moment, before clicking to another scene.

Pale, flickering lips, and black hair, long and thin body, scrunched brows; a fourth night and a first night, three drunk men and bright green eyes-

Him. That boy.

The vampire jumped to his feet in a flurry of activity, letting an instinctive and guttural growl escape up out of his throat and through his mouth, pacing forward and unlatching the window in order to get a stronger whiff of the scent.

" _Au nom de Circé,_ " he growled, puncturing the windowsill he underneath his hands, " _Pas du tout! Merde, merde, merde!_ "

It wasn't possible, there was no way, this had to- it just had to be- a different scent. This couldn't be the same boy, such a thing is not possible!

He took in another breath, cataloging new sensory information; 3:16 am and thirty-five seconds, fifteen degrees Celsius, cold winds gathering along the East, not likely to rain for another week- he stopped, feeling his teeth pulse at the scent. The scent he had smelled before and taken.

It was impossible! It was entirely impossible and yet, the scent was telling him otherwise, and the scent was never wrong.

That boy, that boy, could it be? Could he be alive? Could it be...

The Kindling.

His brain clawed at the thought, bringing the possibility to the very front of his mind and examining it roundly. The very word threatened to tear at his seams, just how likely was it? Such a story was mere mythology, he knew, and yet...

The man tore straight across the other side of his study, dumping books from off the shelves in a feverish haze, and scanning the titles to look at any worthy information.

He let out a deep call, laced with irritation, and only a moment later a timid, blinking servant rushed into the room.

The other man bowed deeply, smiling with a twitch, "Your Majesty," the man said, "What is it that you require of me?"

" _J'ai besoin d'un livre_ ," the vampire muttered to himself, regarding the servant with a deepening expression, "I need a book! A book about The Kindling, now! Get it for me!"

The servant swallowed, taken aback by the murderous threat that trembled in the voice of his Lord, and nodded before bowing deeply and dashing off in a frenzy.

The vampire stamped the books with the heel of his boot, pacing the room as tried to stifle his anger and wandlessly slamming the window behind his desk shut.

This boy, this infuriating boy, that drove him wild, that drove his mind and his chest to the brink of insanity with that sweet scent and those wide green eyes; that boy who had resisted his Allure more casually than a fly, that damnable boy whose skin smelt as fresh as if it had been unclaimed, that boy who plagued his mind and his dreams so unassumingly-

His thoughts were interrupted only moments later when the servant knocked and entered, looking out of breath yet forcing himself to take slow exhales, "Sire," he began, "I retrieved this from-"

He was interrupted when the vampire hastily grabbed it, flipping through the text, "Leave."

The servant nodded, bowing, before he left the room without bothering to ask if there was anything else his liege required.

The vampire hastily traced his eyes down through the contents, murmuring under his breath and perusing to the section in the back of the book, entitled: 'The Kindling Returned'

_When the turning of the age occurs,_

_when the foes threaten to destroy Us,_

_One- A Kindling to the Fire- shall rise up,_

_Once human, then Turned_

_Half his kind, Half Our Kind_

_Scent sweeter than roses,_

_Bonded forever to the Turner_

_The Kindling will rise_

_The Kindling will save Us_

The man bowed his head over the text, shoulders drooping, and he reminded himself of wax dripping off a lit candle.

At first glance, it was implausible, and it certainly felt so, yet- keeping in mind the thousands of years the Vampiric race has existed, wouldn't the probability that the time he existed in now, or any other time for that matter, in which a Kindling or some other fated savior would appear, be inevitable?

Probability all depended on the statistics of humans bitten per year and in just magical Britain alone, that figure would be at very least a couple thousand, a significant cut of the population. Would it be too preemptive to assume at least one of the bitten would, at some point in human history, survive it?

However, if the destiny of said human is predetermined, and the general time of the bite also fated to happen, then that leaves no room for probability to exist within the scenario at all. Assuming such a savior does exist, or will exist, then it certainly wouldn't be too conclusory to state that of all eras in Vampiric history that 'The Kindling' would be needed now.

The continuing violence going on as of late, attacks along more than just the borders of the Czech Republic, but widespread anti-Vampiric movements occurring in Egypt, the Balkan states, the sub-African continent, and not to mention Britain, would warrant it.

This includes not just formation of opposition by magical humans, yet muggles alike, who are too becoming more cognizant of the existence of vampires. True, muggles who think vampires exist, as of this time, are thought of as crazed yet it could be only a matter of time until full-throttle movements to decimate vampires are launched by big non-magical governments.

While it wasn't as much as a threat in the fifteenth century when such attacks were promoted, now it could be with the mind-boggling expansion of technology that rivals the power of wizards themselves. Muggles have created weapons causing mass destruction, able to threaten the lives of millions, and that could surely destroy all of the vampire existence.

A visible shiver wracked his body at such a thought.

If there was any era in which a Kindling would arrive, it would be now, in perhaps the most volatile and dangerous era there was as of yet. And maybe, just maybe, he was the one to have caused the development of such a fated Savior.

If only...

The man blinked, glancing out the window and plopping the text on his desk when he realized that the sun was sure to rise soon.

He could think on it later.

He took a deep breath.

He would find that boy.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N)
> 
> 1) Au nom de Circé: in the name of Circe...
> 
> 2) Pas du tout! Merde, merde, merde!: No way! Shit, shit, shit!
> 
> 3) J'ai besoin d'un livre: I need a book


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

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_"Which one smells the best, little Raven?"_

The only thing Harry could register in his head was the feeling of sweat and pain. Big, fat droplets coated his scalp and chest and legs, coating it so thoroughly that, the moment he awoke, the boy thought that maybe he had been drowning.

And pain. Pain so fiery and constant that he couldn't even find the source of it, because it ached everywhere, in every tangible region of nerve and bone and tendon and muscle, it roasted; a violent civil war set on the shore of his bloodstream. A body both accepting and rejecting itself.

His lids rejected the very notion of his eyes fluttering open and, when they finally did, it was only by clasping his palms deep into his mouth that he stifled a scream.

That was when he felt it, felt two, hard pellets in his mouth and spat them into his open hand, squinting and feeling them and, realizing with a deep, shuddering cough that they were his teeth.

His teeth.

Trembling fingers felt for the two parallel, empty spaces in his mouth, and when they did, they squeezed gingerly, only to fling right back out of his mouth.

Terrible, sharp pain. Something, something- it- something was forcing its way out of his gums. Two hot screwdrivers forcing nails right out of his teeth.

The pain and sweat mingled into each other, their boundaries becoming indistinguishable, until sweat felt sharp and pain smelled musky.

For the first time since he awoke, Harry took a deep breath, and that was when he smelt it.

He sniffed, not sure of what soft scent had been wafting in the room, and suddenly the smell of- of- decaying leaves and compost and pine trees and Bluebells; the smell of bark right after it rained, that was so tender and soft that he cut into it with his fingernails; of Spring just beginning to break out through Winter; overwhelmed him.

It was so strong and tangible that he thought, if he just reached his arm out, he would've been able to touch it, and feel thick branches, the soft pattering of rain over his skin, and the delicate petals of a Narcissus.

And he did reach out, trying to feel what he'd imagine being the forest, to imagine a figure above him with dark curls and wheat-yellow eyes, and was surprised when he couldn't feel it.

So surprised that, firstly, he couldn't feel the forest and, secondly, he had been thinking of that man, that his head was catapulted straight back into reality and sweat and pain which he had nearly forgotten.

Despite the pain, he had longed for that scent, longed for the owner of it so fully and so completely that Harry thought it would be a crime if nature didn't break its own laws and bring that man to him.

He laid rigidly, not able to fathom the thought of moving out of bed and wondering, as reason and awareness eluded him, if the scent was emanating just on the other side of the curtain.

Yet, when he pushed the curtain downward, he was struck with an empty view of Ron's bed right next to his own.

"Tomorrow," the boy promised to himself drowsily, fully understanding the whispered statement at the moment yet, in the morning, not having a clue of what he had been trying to tell himself.

He forced himself to sleep, shutting his eyes and letting the war in his body and head fully drain him of the resources that consciousness would demand.

All the while, the smell of earth guided him.

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Through the rest of the night, feverish and sick, the boy drifted in and out of consciousness, never really aware whether he was awake or not or somewhere in between in a limbo state that most Eastern philosophers spent their lives trying to get.

All he could piece together, in those blithe and confused moments of more-awake-than-asleep, was a ringing discomfort and limbs mingled in between sheets and cold wetness and his mouth letting quiet profanities slip out past their borders.

The one sensation that lived right in more-asleep-than-awake and more-awake-than-asleep and limbo was the throbbing of his gums where two pointed teeth were beginning to emerge.

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When he finally woke up, it was to the sound of rustling and tired conversation.

Ron was the first to talk, voice gritty with phlegm yet still quite boisterous, "Do you 'spose Harry's gone to the Great Hall already?"

No one replied except for Neville, "I would think so, he's usually the one to wake us up."

Harry hoped greatly that no one would slide open his curtains- he didn't think he'd have the capacity to deal with doing anything other than curling into himself even farther, let alone get up and act normal.

"Yeah," the other boy agreed, pausing, "I'm just gonna check."

He tensed, hearing footsteps approach closer and, glancing up from the sheets, saw fingers curl around the curtain fabric and get ready to yank them open.

The boy didn't so much as breathe; hoping, praying, that somehow he'd turn invisible without his cloak on.

And then, more footsteps from a different source, and a quick knock on the door.

Those fingers uncurled from the curtain and without warning a- a- prefect, no, a Head Boy, it sounded like- bounded in, breathless, "The Headmaster has got an announcement to make, everyone report down to the Great Hall immediately."

Harry heard more rustling, probably everyone hurrying to put the rest of their clothes on and fix their hair into a semblance of neatness, until he heard steps out the dorm.

It was after five minutes of hearing nothing except beads of sweat roll down his skin, that he allowed himself a deep sigh of relief, "Thank Merlin."

That was so close, was all he could think, dizzy with relief; and he should know because he'd often had great deals of experiences that were close.

It was with great difficulty that he scooted to the left side of his bed and opened the curtain, hissing at the daylight and feeling a far more pronounced pain than was usual, yet finding it bearable.

He then shuffled to the the dormitory bathroom, leaning against the frame and making sure it was dead silent before he allowed himself to drift in further.

When he leaned against the porcelain sink, patting cold water on his hot face, his eyes drifted to the mirror and he almost couldn't believe what he had seen.

It was himself, trembling so much he almost couldn't meet his own eyes, yet recognizing the flushed face, pale lips, and wet mat of hair.

He cupped cool sink water into his hands, vividly reminding himself of being at the Dursleys' and hunched over a hose, and probed it over his sore gums, almost moaning at the sensation of hot pain pooling out of them and into the water before he allowed it to dribble down his chin and patter on the edge of the porcelain.

The water was pink.

He cautiously lifted at his upper lip with a shivering hand, examining the redness that was either from irritation or caked blood in his mouth, vision sidling to the two empty spots that interrupted the rows of otherwise perfectly intact teeth.

Weak knees almost collapsed underneath him, ears not recognizing the hiccoughs and short, painful whines as his own until several moments later.

He was becoming It, he was becoming one of _Them_ , what bit him.

Not human. He wasn't going to be human anymore. Or, maybe he wasn't even that anymore. Maybe he was already it. The one thing that made him at least a little bit normal, the one thing he shared with everybody else- gone. Just like that.

The moment he thought there wasn't enough oxygen in the bathroom, and that it was hopeless, and that he would lose everything- he was just as suddenly caressed by the scent.

The forest.

Okay. Okay. It's okay, really. He could never hope to be normal now, but it wasn't all bad, was it?

Harry regarded the corpse in the mirror, wondering how he was going to get through the day.

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	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing

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Harry hunched over the sink, shivering as more droplets of water ran down his face and not exactly understanding why because he felt unbearably hot.

Whatever he chose to do, he had to decide quickly.

The boy wondered seriously about just going back to the dorm and curling up until he fell back asleep. It would be so simple for the first thirty minutes- until, that is, Potions would start and he would both be causing a frantic search for him and then a consequent month of detention for skipping class.

And when they did eventually find him, seeing as that his own bed was not a particularly suitable hiding place, they'd also get full view of how bad he looked. Fevered and sick and glassy eyed, not to mention with missing teeth.

But just what was the other option? What else could he do? Harry examined himself in the mirror, blinking with a slow and dopey frown, and wondering if he was as flushed and sweaty as he thought he looked.

Hell, the moment he opened his mouth he'd be carted off to the Infirmary; if not St. Mungo's.

Either way they'd probably find out about him, and what was happening to him, but at different times.

The boy put his face up towards the mirror, resting his forehead on it and leaning his abdomen against the edge of the porcelain; taking care to inhale as the scent of forestry lingered in the air.

Glamour charm.

Harry roused himself from against the fogged mirror, head perking up inscrutably at the thought. Could it work? Could he really pull it off for a whole day until he was allowed to slump back into the dorm, and no one would notice a thing?

Surely they would, surely they'd see right through it, with the way his hands trembled and with how labored his breathing was. If he barely had the energy to stand then how could he find the energy to use that sort of magic and keep it up all day?

The boy shifted himself, leaning his weight against the linoleum plastered over the castle stones and allowing his body to slide right down to the floor.

You've used glamour charms in even worse conditions than this, Harry thought, red face darkening in what he thought was either shame or horror or a combination of both.

It was true, over the Summer he'd always acquire a multiplicity of bruises from a number of sources he'd rather not disclose. In public, anyways.

He'd had some experience and, not to mention, talent at the particular charm; it wouldn't really be too much to use it now when he really needed it, right?

No one ever suspected a thing when he had used it before.

Harry coughed.

Well, yes, they did, but they never could see any proof and then a week would go by, maybe two, and they'd all just forget about it! They always did.

It could work, it worked on countless scrapes he'd had before, it worked when he was on the brink of exhaustion; so, why not now?

With that in mind, he dug through his robes to find his wand and, scrutinizing the color in his face, cast it before moving to his forehead and touching up the weak areas.

The most tricky area to glamour was his teeth; he'd only ever had experience working with skin, but after some careful charming of the gums they looked almost just like normal.

When he was finally done, he emerged from out the common room and slunk down to the Great Hall; vaguely remembering hearing something about an important announcement.

It must've been pretty important, considering that nothing like having a Head Boy go from dorm to dorm has ever happened before just to make sure everyone heard it.

The closer he approached, the more silent he realized the Great Hall was from beyond the thick oak doors, and only Dumbledore's voice rang out to him, making a few words intelligible; "Be watchful... professors will be looking out..."

For some reason, it made his skin itch, yet he quickly dismissed the sensation when students began streaming out from the Great Hall and heading to their first class.

Whatever it was, it probably had to do with an intruder in the castle; he'd made a similar speech when he thought Sirius was here in third year. Harry couldn't help but feel a pervading sense of wrongness.

The boy teetered on the stairs uncomfortably, looking over the heads of the crowd for Ron and Hermione, but stopped when he started feeling exhaustion pool in his legs and decided to just make it to Potions.

Once he had made it, he situated himself the nearest to the back that he could get and Neville quickly took the seat next to him, scratching at his ear and looking down at the stained desk, "You wouldn't mind being partners today, Harry?"

"It's no problem," he said, quickly adding, "Do you know Dumbledore's announcement was?"

Neville blinked, "So you weren't there."

"I slept in and no one woke me up."

"Wait," there was a pause, and Neville's entire face scrunched as he started fiddling with the quill on his desk, "Then how did you know there was one in the first place?"

Harry stilled, lying smoothly, "I heard people talking about it on the way to class."

The other boy lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "Word is that Dumbledore thinks a dark creature-"

A deep, bass voice cut through all the conversation in the room, "Silence!"

The boy couldn't help the inquisitive look that remained on his face long after his head snapped to the front of the room, making Snape comment wryly on his lack of brains, and with that the class was shoved into the regular motions.

The professor gave a short lecture, stressing certain pages in the book and ending with the usual remark: "Only a dunderhead could possibly mess up this potion," throwing a look towards either Neville or Harry himself, and lastly motioning everyone into action.

The boy tried to stir himself from his seat, and felt his vision whirl until he sat back down again, "Neville, do you think you could get the ingredients?"

He nodded, scurrying to the other end of the room and toting his book in hand, taking so long that everyone had sat back down except for Neville as he continually took things and put them back.

By this time, Hermione had spotted Harry and dug an elbow into Ron's side, pointing and giving the boy a questioning look.

"I slept in too late," he mouthed, shrugging his shoulders with a fake sheepishness.

Ron grinned widely, "Sorry."

When Neville got back, the boy immediately set to putting the burner under the cauldron, and they began.

Neville readily took the role of telling Harry what to add and at what times, uncomfortably checking and rechecking the cauldron at regular intervals.

Meanwhile, Harry was resigned to dicing Monkshood with hands whose trembling grew more pronounced with each task, and by the end of the lesson he almost missed the cauldron entirely when trying to pour in finely powdered Daisy root.

The boy shivered at the chill from underneath his robes.

"Hey, are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah."

It was much too cold in the Dungeons, and it was a relief when he was dismissed to Transfiguration.

He was, of course, flanked by Ron and Hermione the whole way- who both chattered about one thing or another he had no interest in hearing at the moment, yet nodded and laughed in the right times.

Every now and again Hermione would give him a look that almost made him think she could see through his glamour entirely, which continued not only when they were traversing from floor to floor but right all through McGonagall's class. It only managed to tire him more.

The class somehow seemed even more long and unbearable than Potions as he tried to stifle the shaking throughout the entire lesson. This was while not only Hermione but the Professor would throw him looks. They were much too observant for their own good, he thought.

Halfway through the class, the lecture had stopped and the students were instructed to practice phase transitions from a liquid to a solid and back again.

Finally able to speak with Hermione, Harry leaned in and asked, "Hey, what was Dumbledore's announcement about?"

She stood straighter, readying her lecture mode, "Really, Harry, you shouldn't be skipping breakfast; my mum told me ever since I was little that if you don't then you won't perform well!" she crossed her arms, "Anyways, Dumbledore thinks that, well..."

"What?"

"The Headmaster thinks a dark creature of some sort entered the school last night, and is telling everyone to be cautious and keep an eye out," she informed, pursing her lips and giving him a long look, "And not go looking for it."

A very bad feeling grew in Harry's chest; a gaping, black hole, "What do you mean? How does he even know?"

Hermione tapped at her chin, glancing sideways as if to remember some forgotten detail, "He said that the wards around Hogwarts had alarmed him that something dark had just appeared in the school," she said, "Which makes no sense because there are anti-apparition wards placed by the Headmaster himself."

A dark creature? How? He wanted to ask more questions but McGonagall had come round to their side of the room, so he turned dutifully to his work.

Holding his wand and casting the spell at various angles, mindlessly trying to get it to work, he considered more of what she told him.

A dark creature. What kind was it, anyways? And how could it just 'appear' in the school? Dumbledore's a strong wizard, his anti-apparition wards couldn't be broken by just any creature.

Appeared... just like that. Poof.

It must be something that was already inside the school to begin with... something that...

Harry's wand clattered to the floor, the echo of wood against stone inaudible to everyone else except for himself.

_Clack-_

It was the echo of dawning horror; as loud as a jet engine exploding in his head and just as scalding.

Oh, Merlin. No.

He was the dark creature that had appeared in the school last night.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

_I'm a dark creature_ , Harry thought, _I must be._

He supposed it should have been obvious before; he had known he was changing for a long time now. And yet, it wasn't. It was an insidious, niggling little piece of information that hadn't even occurred to him until now.

His wand rocked along the stone ground, rolling with what seemed a deliberate slowness until it burrowed into the little mortar indent; resigning itself to a motionless that mimicked Harry's own.

How hilarious. How darkly ironic. How twisted. Gryffindor's 'golden boy', the Boy-Who-Lived, the 'Savior', the 'Chosen One' to fight for the light- Harry Potter- was a dark creature.

The boy who has to fight against the epitome of dark, Voldemort, now dark himself. How could fate possibly find a way to make the situation more comical?

It was Hogwarts' wards that had recognized him, that were trying to out him to the Headmaster in order to protect the other students.

Hogwarts thinks that he would hurt other people, other students, and so does Dumbledore.

And Hogwarts was home.

The one place where he knew he belonged, the one place where he could feel safe- was turned against him.

How laughable.

Harry's chest tightened.

Harry wondered what the Headmaster would do if he knew what Harry was. Would he kick the boy out of the school? Would he send Aurors to hunt him down?

What would the students do? His friends?

Just how deep did his darkness go to set off the wards; was it brimming just past the skin, laced in the muscles, the tendons, the nerves- was it all in his head, or was it in his very blood?

Harry's breathing faltered, the air itself starting to shiver and solidify in his lungs, and as suddenly as he looked at the stones beneath his feet, he was just as quickly struck with the unfamiliarity of it.

The secret magic that tingled all throughout the castle pervaded him, the stained glass resembling nothing he had seen before, and he felt the memories decay. He couldn't tell whether it was himself or if the castle was avoiding him, somehow. Either way, he felt like a foreigner among the Amish.

He stifled the lump him throat, swallowing thickly and bending down to pick up his wand, casting spells fruitlessly because his mind was elsewhere.

He had barely registered it when the class was dismissed and it was only when Hermione elbowed at his side that he started packing up his things, lurching into the hallway.

The moment he got out of the door, Hermione took a moment to look at his face, "Harry, are you feeling alright?" she asked, narrowing her eyes, "You look flushed!"

Harry stopped, nibbling on the edge of his lower lip, "Hm? Really? I feel fine!"

The glamour must be wearing off.

If they saw his teeth...

He needed to reapply it, quickly.

"I'll see you guys in the Great Hall! I need to talk to Flitwick about, my, the essay he assigned."

As he started traversing up the steps, he felt a tug at his robes, and was met with the girl's defiant glare, "That's it! You're going to the Infirmary!"

The boy tightened under her searching look, feeling twitchy, "What? Why?"

Hermione gripped even harder at his robes, dragging him down several steps back to her level, "You- you run away to Diagon Alley, without a word, and you don't tell us why, you're not eating right, you always look like you stayed up all hours of the night and... and now you, you don't look okay, you never look okay, Harry!" she blinked rapidly, voice a rasp, "You look really sick!"

The boy threw Ron a pleading look, and he just scratched the back of his neck, resigned, "She's right, you know."

His voice was a low, irritated whisper, "What are you trying to say to me?"

Hermione clenched and unclenched her fist into Harry's robes, balling them up in her hands, and looking down at the staircase as if to gather strength before looking back up, "Oh come on, you must know, everyone's thinking it! I've always thought it, but you're just so- you're just so bloody," Ron let out a quiet gasp, "So bloody stubborn that you won't tell anyone about what those people do to you!"

"I haven't a clue what you're talking about," Harry said.

"We're your friends," she said.

"Let me go."

"I want to make sure you're okay first."

This was bad. This was very bad. If she took Harry to the Infirmary then Pomfrey would find out and tell Dumbledore. And Dumbledore would- he didn't know what Dumbledore would do, "I'll go to the Infirmary on one condition."

She threw Ron a private look, the two having a silent conversation, "Okay."

"That you don't go with me there."

Hermione took a breath through flaring nostrils, "And you promise you'll go? You swear?"

The boy nodded, feeling guilt turn his stomach.

The girl looked at her hands still balled up in Harry's robes and, after a few moments, withdrew them, "Okay, we trust you," she said, "We'll see you later."

The two receded to the Great Hall, sometimes giving him looks as if to see whether he'd disappeared or not, and once they had turned a corner, the boy rushed to the nearest bathroom.

When he looked in the mirror, he immediately set to work, touching up the flushed skin and working with the glamoured teeth again to make them more solid and real looking. It was strange how quickly the spell was fading; in his earlier experience it always lasted at least a full day.

Of course, he was more exhausted now than when he usually cast the spell.

Looking much better than when he had walked in, Harry made his way to the Great Hall to greet his friends, sitting next to them at an empty spot.

"Pomfrey gave me a," he paused, "Pepper-Up Potion; it helped a lot, really," he said to their questioning looks.

Hermione pursed her lips out of habit, "Well, you do look a lot better, I suppose..."

When the tension dissipated, Ron started chattering loudly about the Chudley Cannons, remarking that they were sure to win the next game against some Scottish team or another because, sure, they had recently been having a bad streak yet the new beater was really starting to warm up to his position and-

He stopped listening at that, thinking maybe in a little while things would go back to normal, and this thought marked the rest of his day passing without incident.

He sat in Flitwick's class dutifully, mastering the art of looking as if he were actually listening, and letting his mind wander for the rest of the lesson before scuttling to History with Binns'; finally heading to the common room, finishing the work he absolutely had to before using the excuse that Pomfrey said it would be best if he got some sleep to get rid of his "nasty cold".

As he flopped into his four poster bed, pulling the curtains shut with one hand and feeling inexplicably happier than he had all day he was suddenly reminded that he had the rest of the week to churn through before it would be the brief, weekend reprieve.

Four days. He could get through four days, right? That was nothing.

He groaned, remembering that Fred and George thought it absolutely crucial he take advantage of the Hogsmeade weekend in order to meet with him to test their products for a new shop they wanted to start- Wizarding Weasley's Wheezes- Weezard Wheezing Weasel's- Wheezes' Weasley's Wizarding-

He almost laughed, the line of consciousness blurring over the more he dozed; that was Saturday, at least. Saturday was a long time away.

The Scent lulled him to sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this   
> Warnings: swearing,

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

He was going to kill that boy when he found him.

It would surely be what that little runt would deserve, distracting him from what he should ultimately be focusing on. He should've been providing his undisclosed attention to the warbling between the Balkan states; he should've been reflecting on the inclusion of some new bureaucrat in Magical Germany who was redoubling the efforts to force 'dark creatures' out of the school systems! He should've been passing out decrees, rallying his people, or whatever he was supposed to be doing.

How sad, it wasn't even close to how his thoughts wandered these days. Too often he'd find himself browsing through a confidential report, too quickly lose his guise of concentration, and then swerve to the window behind him, staring out at the stars like a damned Romantic!

It was utterly unseemly. Not only of himself, but of that... that scent. That rich scent that fermented like grapes in the air, that scent that trailed after him like a lost puppy wherever he went, that scent that drove him mad with need.

These actions were not decorous, not proper, nor was it fair to his people, for a ruler such as himself to be doing such. And yet, despite these protestations that plodded around in the back of his head, he caught himself doing the very same thing this night without so much as a spare thought to the untouched papers on his desk.

It was an early Monday evening, roughly 11:21 pm, with a slight chill permeating the room- twelve degrees celsius. It was an especially dark night, he thought, even though he had no such basis for thinking that with any sense of rationality.

And, of course, ever faithful, was the scent that dogged his breaths.

That boy.

He'd have to find him, he knew, and yet he was struck dumbly with the question of how.

The scent was growing stronger. It was crazing him, making him think- dare he admit- strangely human things. Not to mention, feel, very human things.

Feelings he'd rather not admit. Feelings someone such as himself should not have the vaguest clue even existed. Feelings of need where such acute desire had never existed before, feelings of extreme impatience where before he would have waited dutifully for hundreds of years, feelings of other types that he was too prideful to admit. Even to himself.

These things, these thoughts and distractions, should've been entirely foreign to him. But they weren't, and that- that- is why he would have to wring that boy's pretty neck when he found him. Perhaps only figuratively but one can always dream.

First, though, the vampire would have to find him.

But where?

He could be anywhere by now, and the man would be damned if he decided to follow some scent trail like a dog.

That boy could be within the farthest corners of the world by now. Absolutely anywhere.

The man swallowed at the tightness in his throat, letting his hands course roughly through his hair and his back hunched almost imperceptibly.

Think; think!

If that boy could be from some distant plain, then why would he traverse all the way to Diagon Alley where the man had found him?

It is plausible he could be staying with relatives he had known yet, considering that he had been trailing completely alone in Knockturn Alley- almost certainly underage-, wouldn't they have gone with him?

The small village is nothing but shops and Inns for those travelling or as of yet displaced from their common residence, and only a small few actually decided to settle there.

The only worth that the shabby location has is to supply robes and school supplies, within the less shady portions of Diagon Alley, that is.

School supplies.

The vampire's head perked up, his elbows moseying back to their respective armrests.

A boy that young must still have a magical education. Right? He didn't look poor, nor was he homeless ruffian, surely he went to a school.

The most proximal school to Diagon Alley would be Hogwarts. The other ones, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, were, he supposed, entirely dismissible considering that the boy had a British accent and didn't have the burly Northern look to him.

Not from what he remembered. And he didn't forget anything. Especially about the boy.

His mind wandered, hands toying with the rings on his fingers and sliding against the chair, and he wondered quite seriously if that boy had a name to him. Maybe something like Adrian or Austin- common British boy names of this time period- yet he quickly dismissed them because such names sounded much too harsh for that soft face; he'd never quite liked 'A' names, either. He didn't much like Chris, too generic, or religious names either- like Seth or Donovan. Maybe a Cecil, that was a suitable moniker, or Elijah; Damian would suit his black hair. Vince, Hudson, Harvey or even Ha-

The vampire blinked, growling gutturally, and wondering why he had been thinking of such useless things.

He couldn't afford to waste his time like this; he had to find the boy and... and... well, he wasn't sure what yet, but he knew that once he was taken care of then things would go back to normal!

Hogwarts- the word repeated in his brain.

It was a small chance, yet the only lead he had.

Yet the wards around it, the wards around it were so strong there was no way he could possibly penetrate them without maiming himself. Perhaps fatally.

It was too risky and likely impossible, not to mention, the man didn't even fully know if the boy was there!

The boy would have to come out of those wards on his owns, assuming he was there.

How many months away until the school got out? There was no way he could wait so long.

At the thought he felt a deep, painful weight in his chest- yet another common, foreign sensation he had been feeling recently. He couldn't place what it was, yet avoided it as much as he possibly could.

The feeling manifested itself into anger, a feeling infinitely more comforting and familiar to him; how dare that- that boy do this to him. Make him this irrational and sappy being he no longer knew! How dare that damn boy reduce him into some sort of warbling mess, that could barely concentrate! Who would have the gall to do this to him except for some incompetent, idiotically brazen human?

How dare a mere human would make him want. Want for anything when he had everything and that human had nothing- absolutely nothing- compared to him.

He pulled himself together, breathing sharply through flared nostrils.

Hogwarts. That boy could be there, right now, breathing and sleeping or eating and doing homework. Just a few hundred miles away with only stone and wards keeping him from the man.

The only thing he remembered about the damned school was that students were almost banned from going to Hogsmeade a few years ago because-

The vampire jolted fully from his seat so fast as if to be nearly invisible.

That's it.

That's his chance-

He let out a warning growl, making five servants immediately enter his study, bowing lowly.

"Your Grace," the first one said, stepping forward and still bent low to the ground, "What is it that you require?"

"Get me all the information you can on Hogwarts, about when the students are allowed to visit Hogsmeade this year," he ordered, "It is imperative."

Five low bows and the servants skated out of the room.

A small chance.

Small, but there.

HPhpHpHPhpHP


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

The rest of the week passed by just as slowly and painfully as Harry had anticipated; his actions revolving around going to class, turning in a slew of substandard work, and then clocking in very early in the evening to finally go to sleep, ignoring Ron's protests about "one final game of Wizarding Chess".

Fifth year had finally started in what Professor McGonagall called, "the full swing of things", and as if a button had been pressed, every teacher had the simultaneous sentiment that the students were naturally ready for an exponentially heavier load of work.

It was not made better by the persistent pain and exhaustion that would start, like a closed capsule, burrowed at the back of the base of his skull and, would release upon consciousness and cloud his entire body in an aching haze.

Each day, in and out, his capacity to both hold up the glamours and a conversation was trickling by like water out of a strainer- leaving him, by the time he was finally allowed to drop into bed, bereft and practically half-dead.

He supposed his friends could see he was looking worse every day; sometimes they'd give him these long looks and, without asking, take his books away from him with the simple explanation, "Let me carry that for you."

At first, it was only Ron and Hermione, but now, Neville and Luna had taken apart in the game too, telling him wryly that: "Oh, it's so cold in here!" and following it up with, "Maybe you'd like a heating charm Harry?", that or Luna would blink at him and say, "Wrackspurts like stained glass. You should stay away from stained glass, Harry."

The boy would take it with barely a nod, and it would happen so often that he scarcely recognized when it did. He supposed that was the scariest thing for them: that he was not his regular stubborn self when he ought to be ripping his books back from their hands, and saying, "No thanks, I'm fine."

When the days passed, he'd cross it off in his head, imaging he was locked in his bedroom at Privet Drive and scratching little tick marks on the walls that would count off the days until he could leave.

All he had to do was make it the weekend, right?

That was what he kept telling himself that, somehow, by the weekend, everyone would get better. Everything would be okay. The pain would stop, the exhaustion would stop, and he could pretend to be normal again.

He didn't know how he knew it, but he did, and he could scarcely imagine the idea that it wouldn't stop.

When the pain stopped, then the changes would stop. The pounding in the bite on his neck would stop, the Scent would stop getting stronger and maybe even go away, and his new teeth- well, he didn't know what they looked like at the moment- wouldn't be ripping through his gums.

Even more than the pain, Harry thought that the changes were the most scary things to imagine. The pain was nothing but a mere side effect of him changing; the pounding in his bite signified his transformation, the new teeth were for- he gulped- for his recently acquired tastes, and the Scent-

The Scent was for-

He didn't know what it's purpose was yet. It wasn't a regular smell, it wasn't the smell of Aunt Petunia's pungent and disgustingly fruity perfume, because it wouldn't go away. And he wouldn't get used to it; it was not something that ever escaped his notice because it was as if every passing moment he was smelling it for the first time.

He could only hope that it would go away too.

All in all, the week was a slow, dull, and painful affair, and he almost couldn't believe the surreality of it when Friday afternoon passed. Part of him thought it would never happen.

Needless to say, he spent the latter part of the day half-dozing in the common room and engaging in a game of Exploding Snap with Ron.

He had stayed in the common room long past after everyone had left, tired of spending half the night staring at red drawn curtains and decided instead to look at the empty fireplace from his position on the couch cushions. Not necessarily because it was interesting to look at, yet more so because that's where his eyes rested.

Harry leaned forward, staring more deeply into the ash pit that didn't even have a stack of wood in it yet because Autumn had only just barely made its mark in the school year. He wondered if he would be able to get out of going to Hogsmeade tomorrow.

Part of him said that he could easily do it; he'd just make some sort of excuse about a detention or 'prior obligations' and, even if his friends thought he was lying, they'd realize he needed the rest and go without him.

He really could use the sleep.

But...

That was the other part of his head; the other side of him that began every sentence with "but", only existing just because a part of himself liked the feeling of being contrary.

Most of the time, it was a lingering voice that he barely recognized, yet at the moment it seemed especially strong.

But, he felt like he should go, for some reason, despite how tired he was. He couldn't even really tell himself why he had to or why it would be the better decision than having a cosy Saturday in his bed.

Besides, wouldn't Fred and George be pretty disappointed if he didn't show up? They've been meaning to talk to him for some time.

Something about going to Hogsmeade just seemed like the right choice to make, and so he did. He dozed in the common room for another thirty minutes, wavering in and out of consciousness, before slumping to the dorm and formally falling asleep- being awoken in the morning by Ron, who tugged him out of bed, and only taking the time to put on fresh robes and a pair of shoes before waddling unceremoniously outside.

He then met up with Hermione, Fred and George, and the five of them took off- chattering all the way about stopping at Zonko's, or how Honeydukes was obviously one of the many priorities, and how they couldn't miss out on a hot glass of butterbeer.

But first, they'd have to stop at a nice little diner- what Harry would later realize was Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop- and chat about super important business plans.

At that point, he had regretted going, yet the contrary part of him still maintained that something was special about going to Hogsmeade this Saturday.

And so the four of them bustled into the bright-pink, saccharin-sweet tea shop to take a quiet booth in the very back, which was unsurprisingly a semi-circular booth with a heart-shaped back. Everything, of course, was covered in frills and little doilies that, prior to then, he didn't know was possible or even ethical to make so 'ultra-girly', in Hermione's words.

Ron dropped his voice to a whisper when one of the waitresses strutted past, "Why are we here-"

The waitress spun back to them, fiddling with a number of pink pens and a small notepad, "What would everybody like?"

Hermione was the first to order, looking at the menu with a grimace, and saying, "Oh-La-La Lovely Lavender, please."

"I'll have the same thing," Ron said, followed by Fred and George who couldn't resist ordering 'Hot Cup of Love' with completely straight faces, and finally Harry who settled for 'Kissy Kamomile'.

As she walked away, Fred leaned in and said, "This is the only place where we can find some privacy-"

"Don't want anyone stealing our ideas," George finished, "Which are absolutely brilliant."

Hermione just rolled her eyes, leaning back into the seat, and Ron asked them about their so-called genius inventions. The two of them, of course, went into a long narrative about some Puking Pastilles or Fever Pills- or-

Either way, Harry wasn't really interested; the more his mind wandered off, and the more the bright pink of the tea shop imprinted itself on his cornea, the more uncomfortable he became.

At first he had thought it had something to do with the seating, that the leather seat was uncomfortable and coarse and that it was poking uncomfortably into his back. Then, when the tea arrived, he thought maybe it was the honey and sugar that was making him feel nauseous and achy.

He twist and arch his back, considering a combination of positions that would make him feel better or relieve the pressure that was building up in his bones.

As the topic moseyed back onto the shop they were planning on having, either in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley, and Ron made a sarcastic remark of where they were going to get the money, Harry continued to feel worse.

Well, maybe it was because it was too warm in here, he thought, or maybe the smell of fat pastries were making him queasy.

He shouldn't have come here-

The contrary part of his mind denied that and, as suddenly as it did, the boy felt a pervading chill shoot up his spine. The unexpected chill almost made him jump up from his seat, but it was roundly followed with a fevered rush in his head, what he thought must be a vague chill, and a pounding in his neck that, for some reason, reminded him of that Night-

As if he had completely forgotten some crucial fact, Harry felt scenes and memories assault his eyes, washing out the glaring pink and replacing it with blackness-

_There was a warm hand resisting on the small of his back, goading him forward with an unrivalled gentleness and replacing the chill of the evening with a constant warmth._

_His eyes looked up, traced along that superior jawline and looked into yellow cast eyes; how strangely beautiful._

_And then- a brimming cruelty, a cruelty he was comfortable with-_

_An alley._

"Hey, what do you think-"

_He was pushed into an alley and the man had traced along his neck with a soft thumb, pushing; Harry felt his blood pulse frantically through his body, as if it were trying to escape._

_The moon glinted on exposed teeth-_

_Searing pain._

"Harry? Ha-arry?" Fred called out, and suddenly the pink returned, along with an arm waving in front of his face.

The boy blinked, confused and shivering, "Huh?"

"What do you think? Do you like the concept?"

He had no idea what they were talking about, yet nodded nonetheless, "Yeah, it sounds great."

His neck pounded so hard it felt like his whole body was moving with the force of it.

And just as suddenly as Fred turned to Hermione, the boy was struck was The Scent just as quickly as the memories-

He sniffed the air, overwhelmed with the power of it, and with or without his own volition he immediately stood, "I'm, uh, I need to go to the bathroom."

He left before he could see their inquisitive looks, and spun out the door of the tea shop, scrambling like a madman when The Scent became stronger.

He weaved through people, sometimes forcefully pulling apart large crowds, making them tumble over or give him some harsh looks, but he paid no attention to it, passing so many thin shops and gray stones and cobbled streets and crooked avenues he didn't know where he was.

But he knew where he was going.

The force of the pounding bite drummed through his neck and into his head, becoming a long, drawing and ricocheting drum beat that felt like it was going to split his body in half-

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Feet hit stone, then dirt, little tufts of grass and flowers, stone again-

Thump, Thump, Thump-

It was at once terribly painful and yet exciting, both exhausting and yet more invigorating than anything he had ever felt- or smelled- or heard- or tasted-

Sharp teeth ripped through gums and glamours, two long sharp points, and he kept bolting down the streets.

The Scent, the Scent was just right around the corner...!

He felt something hook around his waist- an arm, maybe- and just as abruptly he was pulled into the claustrophobic space between two unidentified buildings, scratching and hissing and all at once a tangle of limbs that were his own and another's-

He opened his eyes to find himself blinking at a pair of yellow irises, a thin nose, pale lips and dark curly hair and as soon as he registered who it was, those lips were colliding into his own.

Hands explored skin, pinching, pressing, feeling, sliding and grasping so hard as to leave bruises, grasping everywhere and nowhere all at once until he wasn't sure whose hands were touching him and he could have sworn they were so close that they were a singular entity-

Still, it wasn't close enough.

The Scent.

The Scent.

This was the owner of The Scent.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

Harry's eyes fluttered open and then closed, his need for the other man outweighing his need to breathe, and when those lips pulled away from his- for a mere second- only then, had he allowed himself a ragged and strained gulp for air.

It was like he was drowning, that man's body covering his own, their proximity making both of them swelter under the heat, dripping with sweat and threads of saliva; yet those hands still grabbed for each other blindly, undeterred, pulling robes and shirts and pants and doing everything in their capacity to reach skin.

He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe and yet he liked it- liked the way their teeth nipped at each other's lips and gums and tongues, liked the way their nails scratched at each other and that, when he whined at a particularly harsh slash, the other man took care to gingerly rub at the sore skin.

And-Oh, Merlin- that taste, the sweetest taste on earth- the taste of their sweat mingling, of hot skin and stewing shoulder blades under lips, it made Harry groan.

The man broke away, leaving feathery kisses along the outer rim of his mouth- gently exploring, the boy arching his neck at the contact when those lips trailed over his neck and licked passionately at the bite-

-No.

"Stop..." Harry moaned, still blithely leaning into the man's advances yet trying to think through the haze of heat and love, "Wait, wait-"

The vampire stilled along his neck, feeling the pounding of blood right underneath the thin flesh, and those lips slowly retracted until the boy met yellow eyes for the second time.

They stared at each other for a long time, faces flushed and sweaty, an unbroken thread of saliva webbed between their chins, and only Harry's strained breathing filled the silence.

As the heat trickled out of the alley, the boy pushed away violently, writhing against the hands placed firmly along his waist, "This is wrong; this is so wrong!" his throat was a rasp, terrified green eyes looking up, "You- you're that man who... you..."

"Yes," the vampire said, making Harry shiver in equal parts pleasure and fear, "I bit you, if that's what you were wondering."

"Why are you here? How? What, I..." the boy paused, catching his breath and pushing his back against the opposite wall as far as he could, "I don't even know your name!"

"Auguste," he smirked, wiping the saliva from Harry's chin with his thumb and ignoring the flinch, "Like the emperor."

The boy struggled, trying but failing to detach those arms from him, and he couldn't tell whether it was the vampires' own strength that kept him pinned or his own secret unwillingness to run away from the elder, "This- you attacked me, you- this isn't right. And you're, you're, a man- not a girl," he shuddered, "Let me go!"

"You're not going anywhere," he said calmly, gripping more firmly around the boy.

Harry tried to propel himself into the street, arching against strong arms, "Let- let me-"

He only clamped tighter, drawing the boy in even more and, whispering under his breath, "Why I don't just snap your neck, I'll never know..." and saying even louder, "I will tell you everything you want to know if you just stay still."

"I don't need to know anything, especially not from you!" the boy muttered in violent irritation.

At this, the man drew Harry into his chest, fully encircling those strong arms around the boy, soft mouth nibbling gingerly on his ear before he started to speak, "Go ahead, tell me that you're not curious. Tell me you don't feel it like I feel it," his voice was a lusty and private whisper, "Tell me you can't feel it- the closeness- that you can't feel my breath over your skin, that you can't feel my hands on your back, and that you can't smell it- that scent- and you can't taste it when your tongue grazes my own-"

Harry's breathing hitched as one hand slithered from his back and into his trousers, not even struggling to get through the boxers. It toyed with his hips, dipping in and out, slithering even more until it circled around his inner thigh- and suddenly, almost unexpectedly, started stroking up and down his- his shaft; a thumb pertly grazing over the tip.

"Rien que de penser à toi m'émoustille," the vampire whispered in his left ear; the boy having no clue what he was saying, yet the words sounding so aroused and sibilant he felt a wet stickiness already forming on the other man's hand.

Those hands toyed with the stickiness, drawing it over his entire length, coating him in until he started rocking to the touches.

As soon as he felt the final, hot surge of pleasure brewing in his gut, and he was certain he could repress it no longer, that hand retracted from out of his trousers, making the boy whine unintentionally, "Please."

"You will be a good boy and listen, yes?" the vampire asked.

Harry gave a brief, wavering nod.

"Yes, I bit you that night," the man grasped the boy even harder into his chest, waiting for the struggling to pass, "But you were- you can scarcely comprehend how good you smelled, it would not even pass through your human brain that you were so inconceivably desirable, and yet, so attainable- that night you walked into Knockturn, how could I resist such a delicious dish that was mere feet from me?"

Harry said nothing to this.

"You wouldn't stop teasing me with that rich, delicate scent," he said, "I was, understandably, angry- and when I saw those men handle what was mine..."

"No one owns me."

"I found you, I had a right to you," the man explained simply, "At least in my society- regardless, you drove me insane, and I was hungry and that was it."

Harry remained silent, feeling the vampire's heartbeat against his own chest.

"But something happened, something expected," he said further, "I presume you know what?"

The boy breathed the smell of dark, leafy canopies, "I lived."

"Precisely," there was a pause, "And that's why we're here."

"How did you find me?"

"Through deductive reasoning," he said, "I remembered you as young, with a British accent- what other reason would you have for being in Diagon Alley than going for school supplies, even if you did go looking in the wrong places? I presumed, quite simply, that you attended Hogwarts and then it was only a matter of catching you while you weren't under the protection of the wards."

The boy remained evermore silent, letting the man think his reasoning was right, "Who are you?"

The vampire blinked, until he realized that the boy meant what his personage was rather than a name, "I am a Lord of sorts, I suppose, much like the human notion of a King-" he continued at the boy's gasp, "But instead of ruling over land, I rule over the entire species," he breathed, "Now it is your turn."

"I'm Harry," the boy said, shouting at the man's look, "Harry! Just Harry; I don't know, I go to school and, well, I learn, and I have friends and I'm normal."

Auguste quirked his eyebrows, "Alright, Just Harry, Just is an odd first name but I suppose-"

"No, no, no," he laughed despite the surreality of the situation, "My first name is Harry."

Silence ensued, until the boy spoke again, "What am I?"

"You are just like me," the elder man said.

A tremble, "You mean I'm-"

"Yes," a nod, "You are a vampire."

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> 1) Rien que de penser à toi m'émoustille, = 'Just thinking about you tantalizes me.' (very rough, not literal).


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

"Yes," a nod, "You are a vampire."

It was funny how those words hit him. It was funny how, sandwiched in between the wall and the other vampire, those words still shocked him.

He didn't even know why, but he supposed the laughter that seemed to swell up along with the terrible pit opening up in the middle of his chest was due to the irony of his shock. He had known it for a long time, known ever since he'd visited Flourish and Blotts- somewhere inside of himself he had always known. And yet, he was blinking in shock, blinking at the words he'd always known were there yet couldn't believe were said.

Maybe it was because he'd spent so long swallowing that statement from out of his throat and into the deepest recesses of himself; he'd internalized it for so long that actually hearing the words- especially from one other than himself- left him reeling. Or maybe it was because he hadn't wanted to believe, because he was spending the longest time trying to deny that he was anything other than normal; this train of thought, of course, had occurred long before even being bitten.

Harry felt oddly empty to have that piece of him, that piece that always screamed 'normal!' at him, just gone.

At the moment, he couldn't tell whether it was a good thing or not, and in an effort to block out the thoughts and the sounds from the adjoining street, he burrowed himself into the elder man's chest; stifling his breath and his tears.

A hesitant hand patted his head, interlocking fingers into his hair and ruffling; Harry supposed he must be mad to be taking comfort in the one who started it all in the first place. But for some reason, he couldn't help but trust the elder, trust that he wouldn't be hurt by the other vampire.

How odd.

How very, very odd.

Stifling the burning in his eyes, the boy hiccuped, sucking in a trembling breath of air from the man's shirt, and the sound was followed by silence for a while, until the other said: "Shh, shh."

They stayed like that for a while, gently swaying, and while his body was comfortably on the ground and in another's arms, his head was lingering on the edge of a deadly precipice.

His ears perked at the sound of his name right out on the street, "Harry!", and he pulled away from the man, leaning his ear pointedly out of the alley.

"No time for Hide and Seek, Harold!"

Obviously Fred and George.

He pulled more away from Auguste, looking hesitantly up at him and down at the street where he could make out the sound of approaching footsteps, "I need to go, I'll..."

The man only stared at him with a daft look on his face, tugging more at the boy's shirt, "What are you talking about?"

Harry blinked, looking more neutrally at the other and detaching himself from the arms hanging limply over his waist and edging to the street, explaining it as if it were the most simple concept in the world: "My friends are looking for me, I don't want them to worry."

There was drawn silence, Auguste regarding him carefully and pausing as his mouth opened as if he was trying to say something exceedingly difficult for him, "What if you get hurt?"

Harry didn't stifle the dawning confusing from his face, "I'll be back soon, I swear," he said, "I can sneak out of Hogwarts tonight and we'll meet right back here-"

The vampire grabbed his wrist firmly, a possessive gleam in his eyes, "Are you mad or just insolent?"

"What?"

"Those are humans," he spat, growling.

Harry said nothing to that statement, "Listen, let's just meet back here and we'll work it out, okay?"

When the boy started tugging again, Auguste tightened, loosened his grip, and then retightened, the two looking at each other, until he loosened his hands again, "And you swear this to me?"

"Yes," Harry said, adding at the unsure look on the vampire's face, one that he was sure never passed over the man's expression, "I will be alright."

He let go, the boy poking his head into the street and looking at a pacing Hermione, tense Fred and George, as well as Ron, and when he was sure none of them were looking his direction, he stepped out into the street.

He wavered back and forth, wondering on how to approach them, until Hermione looked up from the cobble stone and blinked at him; making Harry wave at his friends when, one by one, they ran up to him.

Hermione was the first to make it to him, her strides long and purposeful, until, completely unexpectedly, there was a stinging, sharp pain on his right cheek.

It almost made his ears ring hollow, not able to decipher what the girl was screaming at him, until he realized with a perturbed blink that she had just slapped him.

"You... you... you're unbelievable, Potter!"

Harry could only stare at her, rubbing at his cheek, and being reminded clearly of once in third year when she hit Malfoy.

Fred and George quickly caught up, half jogging, with Ron trailing behind and wondering if he should say something.

The girl stared at him for a long while, chest heaving up and down with a strong effort for air, yet she only breathed through flared nostrils.

He swallowed, "When I said I was going to the bathroom," and he paused, wondering, yet quickly dismissing, the idea of telling them what the truth was, "There were two people snogging in the men's room at Puddifoot's; I went looking for a different one, is all."

"What on earth took you so long?"

The boy rubbed at the back of his neck, staring at the ground, "The bathroom I was going to use- well, me and the cashier got into a fight; he said I could only use it if I bought something, so... yeah."

The girl took a small step backwards, "Okay," she said, lips pursing and mouth moving with great effort, "I was wrong, it's just- you've been disappearing too much this year. I shouldn't have hit you."

Harry examined even more closely the cobbled stones underneath his feet, not wanting to hear yet again the explanation of what Grimmauld Place was like without him- Sirius ready to break down, from what'd he heard, and Mrs. Weasley just as likely to snap. Even Remus, the most cool-headed man he'd ever known, was caught pacing and nibbling at the edges of his nails. He already felt guilty enough, and it made him think that maybe he should've just told them where he was all along back in the Summer.

The guilt was not made better by hearing the mumbled apology from Hermione and the admission that she was "wrong", because he knew it was very hard for her to say that and because he was equally aware that the whole thing was his fault.

Fred stepped forward, clapping a burly hand on his shoulder, "Well, I suppose we should be heading back," he sighed dramatically, "And I was so looking forward to a hot butterbeer, my dear Harry."

"I guess it's all your fault," George added, fake-weeping into his own hands and shrugging wryly, "Harold, you always ruin everything."

He was thankful that the twins couldn't see his darkening expression, the frown and terrible shuddering of his chest; they were right. He was always messed things up- whether it was by pulling Begonias from the garden rather than weeds, or by making everyone worry about him.

He heard Vernon's voice ring in his head, 'Stupid boy!'.

He mustered a fake smile, heaving his shoulders in fake laughter along with everybody else, and, starting to feel nauseous from what he thought was the sun, the five of them pooled back into Hogwarts only thirty minutes later.

When he got there, he played Exploding Snap with Ron, worked up a strained conversation with a still-cool Hermione, and worked on some essays in an effort to distract himself.

It was later that he slumped in the common room and to the bathroom, starting to brush his teeth that when he opened his mouth he noticed his canines-

The toothbrush clattered to the sink, toothpaste still frothing in his mouth even after he spat it out; at first it hadn't been noticeable, but when he looked more closely it seemed obvious-

His new teeth had grown in.

He swallowed thickly, grimacing at the taste of badly flavored mint, and examined the very sharp edges of his upper canines. It was with a shudder that he remembered talking and smiling with his friends- even without his glamour on at all- showing proudly off the new teeth.

The new teeth that were meant for-

That were meant for-

He felt queasy. He would never do that- never- not to another person. He'd rather starve.

They weren't that noticeable, his friends mustn't have noticed at all- or they would mention something to him. In fact, they were the same size as his last teeth, just as pronounced, yet clearly not of the same shape.

He picked up his toothbrush, calmly leaving the bathroom and slipping into the dorm, closing the curtains around his four poster bed.

It took awhile for all the others to step into bed and even longer than that for them to stop talking and fall asleep, but Harry was thankful for the time to process what had happened.

Soon after that, there was the sound of steady breathing and soft snores, except for Ron, who always snored loudly, and it was only then that he allowed himself to quietly sneak out of bed and down stairs, heading from there to the corridors with the Marauder's map in hand and stuffing himself through a secret painting passage.

As he shuffled through the dank tunnel to Hogsmeade, he started thinking.

Some part of him believed that none of it had actually occurred, that it was all in his head.

But why on earth should that mean it's not real?

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing, violence themes

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

Lifting up a wooden slab that brushed just over his head, Harry peered out of the crack, examining the quiet, dusty little wooden floor.

He readjusted the hood over his head, it was only when he was entirely sure that he couldn't hear anything that he finally allowed himself to crawl out of the secret passage and into the silent Honeydukes' back room.

It was just as he had remembered it the last time he had been there in third year- with cardboard boxes strewn over the room and caked in a thick layer of dust, dank air permeating throughout the room. Probably, Harry supposed, because the small rectangular window on the left wall was never opened.

The boy leaned forward, taking delicate and paranoid steps that still managed to upset the rotted wood, and he tensed automatically whenever it produced a rather loud creak; he would feel much less vulnerable if he still had his invisibility cloak. Which was still with the Dursleys, if not destroyed already.

It made him shudder to think that he'd forgotten his things; every material possession that he had ever valued was in that trunk. He'd never been brave enough to sneak back into Vernon's home, anyways, so he supposed thinking about it was useless anyways.

And now, he was left without his cloak.

The boy gulped, fiddling with his robes and looking at the worn wood beneath his feet for only a moment before looking back up, stepping forward determinedly.

Nonetheless, he wasn't here to think about those things. Or a photo album, for that matter.

When he made it to the adjoining door that led out into the main candy aisles, he put his ear up to it, stifling the sound of breathing by sniffing through his nose and instantly, without even listening at all, he knew. There was no one at the shop.

He didn't know how, or why he'd had figured it out so suddenly, yet he just knew and that was all there was to it. And with that knowledge came new information that sent his head spinning when it all streamed into his consciousness at once: 11:44 pm and thirty-four, no, fifty-seven seconds; thirteen degrees celsius, with a cold wind beginning to blow along the East approximately one-hundred kilometers, three- maybe four- sleeping occupants in a flat just one acre away, one of which would serve as a suitable-

The boy gasped, pivoting backwards, and clutched at his head- wondering momentarily if there was an intruder in his own mind.

When the strange new sensation passed, he spun around, looking in all directions, yet the lot was silent all except for himself.

That was odd.

He decided to think about it later.

Harry opened the door and nimbly trailed through the shop, still cautious, and then out into the street where he allowed himself to be louder.

There was no one else he could see that was outside; it was very strange, yet he supposed that since the whole village was constructed because of the influx of students, that would make sense. Still, it was a tad eerie.

He rounded a few corners, lurking over the edges of buildings, and took rights which he later thought must've been wrong; there were instances he had niggling doubts about where he was going and, furthermore, what he was doing.

And yet, the only moments when he paused, an inscrutable look or hesitation on his face, was when he wasn't quite sure where he was going.

He knew he had to meet this man here, even though he was dangerous, even though his intentions could surely be very bad, even though he could only be using Harry; it wasn't like he really had a choice in the matter, or a choice in his own head.

The same head that denied any strong feelings for the vampire.

The boy paced, looking at alleys and passageways which were either too narrow or too wide or not the right kind of stone to be the one that he was in; other than that, they all looked the same.

He stifled the panic that blared off in his brain and pushed it to the back; repressing thoughts that, maybe, Auguste was waiting for him and disappointed he hasn't shown up, will assume Harry lied to him, and the two would never ever see each other again; or maybe, without Auguste, the boy would be open to attacks, like on that one night-

He exhaled slowly. No, none of that would happen.

He closed his eyes; at this rate, he wouldn't find anything either.

When he opened his eyes again, a few seconds later, he had been startled by two strong arms tugging around his waist, dragging him into his chest.

He thrashed, screaming, until the unknown attacker put his hand on Harry's mouth.

Oh no, no, no, no, no.

"Shush," the man said, "It's Auguste."

He stopped reacting violently, fists still clenched and wavering at his chest; he didn't speak, heavy breathing filling the silence.

The vampire rested his chin on the top of Harry's head, sniffing, and gripping even tighter around the boy's waist, "I almost thought you had run away, daft boy."

They stayed like that for many minutes, revelling in the sensation of being close to each other; at least Harry felt like that, he couldn't speak for the other man. But he could hope.

Auguste brought his lips to the boy's ear, "Let us leave this place."

Harry shivered, "To where?"

"To my palace."

Harry turned around to face the vampire, pushing against his chest, "You have a palace?"

He blinked, regarding the boy, "Well, of course; I am a ruler. Where else would I live?"

"I just didn't expect that," he nibbled on his inner lip, "How do we get there?"

"Like this," the man said, pulling a locket from out under his clothing and whispering something, until there was a rush of color and sound and then a few moments later, finally, Harry's eyes rushed to meet the ground.

The moment his feet hit tile, Harry's knees buckled despite the grip the other man had on him, and he felt nausea well up in his throat not only from the unexpected whirring motion, but also from particularly bad memories with Portkeys that he'd rather not repeat.

When the man let go of him, hoping he'd find his balance, the world only whirred even more quickly, almost making him topple over completely.

A stray hand patted on his back, pulling him forcefully into a standing position by tugging roughly at his collar.

When Harry's vision and nausea quelled, he was able to look more deliberately at the room; finding himself closely examining the rich reds and subtle oak accents of the floor, a lush carpet which expanded all over until it met with walls so thick with paint that it looked creamy and velvety to the touch. Defensive wooden shelves, what he thought must've been mahogany, lined the entirety of the far right wall, packed with various tomes that either looked very old or relatively new; the shelves shot straight up to a very, very tall ceiling.

The rest of the furniture were varying shades of dark brown, oaker woods; including two thick, cream arm chairs around a circular coffee table, a persian rug, and a tall desk cluttered with papers and misplaced quills.

The man, still tugging on his collar, plopped him in an armchair, "Sit, you are not to move until I return; do you understand?"

He nodded, sinking into the furniture, "Where are you going?"

"That is none of your concern," he said, "I will return shortly."

He left out the door and padded down the hall, and Harry sat obediently for only ten minutes before his curiosity about the room made him get up and start looking around.

It looked very rich and elegant, the whole room a little too dark and Gothic for Harry's taste; he would've preferred more and taller windows which would have really let the light in. He smiled wryly when he remembered the man was a vampire.

Taking very quiet steps, Harry was met with the desk and, leaning over, he soon found he was unable to not touch anything; he started rifling through the papers, catching trace words of 'uprising' and 'confidential'. When he was done, he organized them so they looked much like they did before- undisturbed- and set his eyes on the attached drawers of the desk.

They were bare of any personal collections or photographs, only housing a few papers; not even a jotted note or a journal existed.

Harry leered even more over his surroundings, edging to the shelves and inching out very large tomes, not even for the curiosity of academic pursuit, yet more so for the childish interest of seeing just how many pages some of the bigger ones had.

It was a naturally quiet place; a big study, he supposed. If it were only the study, than just how grand was the rest of the palace?

He could scarcely imagine it; any room in Hogwarts would be hard pressed to look this grand, and it was probably pretty small compared to the rest of the castle, or palace, or Chateau- whatever this place was.

Itching to leave the room, Harry edged even closer to the door, turning the knob slowly and with a calculated deliberation, peaking out into a very wide and robust looking corridor that seemed to expand for miles.

The walls were a very warm tone that the boy couldn't make out in the lighting, lined with a trail of large, raucous oil paintings; the walls were as tall as towering arcades, near the top a lingering triforium and stained glass hooded with an overarching vaulted ceiling.

It was grand and magnificent, and the boy couldn't help moving out of the doorway, pacing along the marble tiling, and eyeing everything he could possibly see.

Halfway down the corridor, he noticed the vague whisperings and portraits that pointed at him suspiciously; he blinked at a very loud, old one, who was fingering his scraggly, long beard and eyeing him distastefully, "Boy," it said, lips raised in obvious contempt, "Just who are you?"

"I'm Harry," he blinked, stuttering, "Pleased to meet you."

"And your family name?"

The boy narrowed his eyes, wondering if he should say it, "Potter."

The elder man in the painting leaned back, examined him with oily black eyes and looked as if he were deep in thought. In only a moment, he leaned to the painting to the right of him, poking his head in the other portrait, "I don't recognize that surname, dear Gertrud, he is not of a proper lineage."

She snarled at him, "A thing like that, in the manor? Preposterous! Dare I say, our great-great-great grandchild actually let a creature such as this inside the castle walls?"

Harry opened and closed his mouth, wondering if he should say something, yet inched along through the hall instead, ignoring the couple.

The noise of the portraits grew louder and more distrustful of him until a younger portrait burst out, in all the fighting, "Intruder! Intruder in the castle!"

Harry quickened his pace past the portraits, yet more and more saw it fit to join in the roar, chanting, like members of a witch-hunt: "Intruder! Intruder!"

He spun the other direction and, panicked, starting bolting back to the study and then his head collided into chest armor, making it whir, and him falter backwards.

He stared up at ten separate figures, all decked in the same metal outfit, looking a lot like Medieval knights. They all pointed wands directly at his head and he gulped.

"Intruder, you are encroaching upon His Highness' territory! What do you have to say for yourself?"

Harry, confused and dizzy, stood, reactively putting his hands to his chest when they all took another step closer; "Halt! Move again and you will be killed!"

"Speak."

He quaked, a stream of liquid which he guessed was blood rolling down the side of his cheek; not daring to shuffle even slightly, "I'm not an intruder! I'm here with Auguste-"

A red jet of light collided with his chest, making the boy screech in pain and almost topple over if not for his fear of being killed; he hadn't moved an inch, what had he done?

Low growls filled his ears, "You dare speak His name! You dare! Treason!"

His heart thumped against his ribs, threatening to break them and tear from his own chest, "I swear, I'm not lying to you!"

Ten different wands pointed even more steady to his head and, without notice, the two guards on his left and right each took an arm and wrestled him through the corridor, the rest of them marching by at his sides.

He wriggled, hissing, and yet another jet of red light was sent barreling into his chest, making him roar in searing pain, "If you do not go along obediently and silently then your punishment will be exponentially worse!"

The boy felt ready to pass out, or to expel the contents of his stomach violently; the world was breaking out of its own axis and tumbling through space with reckless abandon.

The moment he had stumbled, not able to take the forceful and steady pace of the guards, two wands, one hovering around his right ear, the other on his left, were already brimming with red magic even before they even cast it.

Right then, eyes painfully wide and a reflected crimson, he saw a figure approach quickly through the corridor and-distantly- he heard a, "Stop!" followed by a feral sounding, "Let him go!"

The guards immediately dropped their wands and his arms without question, sending the earth plummeting downward through the universe and him straight to the ground.

He heard the metallic clink of metal-covered knees on marble, "But My Grace, this..."

The man sounded more angry than Harry could scarcely imagine, and he couldn't tell if the man was mad at him for leaving the study or the guards for handling him so roughly, "You are not permitted to touch him; to lay a finger on him, do you understand?"

He heard a unanimous, "Yes, m'Lord."

"Leave," he had said and, right as the the sound of metal clinking died down and he was tugged up to his feet by a strong arm, the world washed away in a haze of black.

When he awoke again, it was buried under massive covers and satin, and the moment he breathed his mind was assaulted with information much like how it was only hours before; 4:30 am and fifty-five seconds, thirteen degrees celsius, hot wind caused by inversion pressure ready to pass over the basin-

It made him blink into consciousness, confused, and wondering where he was.

A steady breath wafted over his neck and chest, warmth along his back and entangled in his legs making him feel hot.

He rolled, pushing against the warmth and sat up, looking at the figure beside him who had likely been awake for some time, "Auguste?"

The man said nothing to this, regarding him balefully, and stepped off of the bed, turned away from him so Harry could only see the back of his head; "I presume you're not going to stay for long, that you are going back to your little school and human friends soon?"

Harry rubbed at his scalp, feeling a gauzy material over his head.

The man had taken the time to heal him.

"Are you mad?"

The vampire growled, folding his arms, "You disobeyed me when I strictly ordered you to sit; idiot boy, worthless ruffian," his whole body looked taut, "Why I am putting up with you, a damned human, is something I will never understand, to be forced to deal with such blatant incompetence and intemperance-"

Harry covered his ears, "I would never have come if I thought I'd be told I'm useless; and yes, I want to leave to my little school and little human friends."

The man snarled, "You are not to continue doing such grievous and unmistakably idiotic things again, lest you get yourself killed," he took a deep breath with his chest, pulling a locket over his head and swinging it like a pendulum over Harry's eyes, "If you are going to go back to that school, I would like for you to return here some evenings."

"You would like for me to come here?" Harry asked, incredulous, "Really, you won't force me?

"It's clear that structure and orders do not work for you," Auguste said, as if articulating something very hard for him to admit, "So I would enjoy it if you returned; It will not work in the Hogwarts' wards."

"What's in it for me?"

Auguste's lips twitched as if he were laughing at his own joke, "Firstly, I'd be able to further monitor that head wound of yours; secondly, you'd get company of your own kind, and, thirdly," he stressed, leaning in closer to the boy, "You should not try to kid yourself by denying our own attractions."

"I'm- I'm not into men," Harry said with a blush that betrayed his true feelings, scrunching the sheets with his hands, "And are you admitting that you like me?"

Auguste breathed through his nose, giving him a lingering look that made the boy shudder, "Harry, isn't it obvious that there is something which connects the both of us, which transcends physical boundaries?"

The boy said nothing.

"Isn't it obvious, can't you feel it- the threads that are attaching two kindred souls?" Auguste mumbled, visibly frowning at the nauseatingly romantic quality of his words, "Somehow, someway, we are bonded to each other."

Harry breathed, saying nothing for the moment, "I should go now."

Auguste nodded, "The phrase is Soif," the man said, "Stress the S, like a hiss; hold it tightly and do not take the necklace off."

Harry nodded, "I'll see you soon," he mumbled, before, grasping tightly the locket around his neck, said, "Soif."

Appearing back at Hogsmeade, he sneaked into the still-closed Honeydukes and through the secret passage, back into Hogwarts and into his own dorm room to sleep before classes started.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> 1) Soif: Thirst (in French), pronounced Sw-off


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

Days had passed. Five days, to be exact. Five days had passed and still Harry hadn't gone back to see Auguste. One hundred and twenty hours.

Five days of seeing nothing but the same castle grounds, walls, and windows he was long familiar with and never the other one he knew of. Five days of classes and friends and professors, five days without robust portraits, palace guards and Auguste.

He felt much more different than he felt all those nights ago, and whenever he thought about it had always surprised him it was only last Saturday night. That's all it was that had separated him from the other man, five days, and it made all the difference.

The ache and the exhaustion was coming back, streaming from the base of his neck to every nerve, tendon, muscle, and fibre. He could feel it, the pain pivoting through him, and it was more than just the aches but the persistent loneliness-

A loneliness that, even surrounded by all his friends and fellow Gryffindors, was always there. There was a piece of himself missing, another half that was yet to found. A hole in his very being that he tried to fill with routine, class, and Hogwarts, which before had always worked, yet for some reason, not now.

He was changing. He was a stranger in his very own skin.

In those long, withdrawn moments he'd spend in class, whether it be in Potions, or Transfiguration, or even the hated DADA, he'd find himself in the perpetual haze of vague sadness, apathy, and physical pain. And at those times, he'd allow himself pull the locket out from under his robes and graze the cold metal with his thumb.

It always made him feel a little bit better, a little more alert. And he didn't know why.

Then, when he was able to finally think more clearly than he could only minutes before, he'd promptly stuff the locket back under his heavy set of robes, and redden in shame. He shouldn't be thinking about that man, Auguste; he shouldn't ever see him again.

It was a miracle that he was able to leave the palace last time, but surely the locket was just a trap, a trap that was supposed to make him trust the vampire.

The Dursleys' had done much the same thing when he was younger; after a particularly bad day, Vernon would lead him out of his cupboard- more soft and affectionate than ever- and give him a piece of bread, and Harry would almost believe that the man loved him, and then, right then, when the man would smile at him and he'd give a wide smile back- that was when Vernon would shove him back in the cupboard. Those moments were always more painful than a punch, or a kick, or even a sneer; he'd make sure something like that never happened again.

Vernon did that to Harry because he was stuck with him, yet the boy knew that Auguste would do that to him for much, much darker purposes. With Vernon he'd always known what was coming, yet with the vampire, it was a mystery, and surely he'd have the capability to do a lot worse.

The boy didn't know what idiotic whim entered his head when he actually went back that night, went back because he trusted this man who he didn't even know; a man who he had encountered only three times. Not to mention, two of those times, he'd been seriously injured.

If he could, he would never see that vampire again.

He ignored the overwhelming pang in his chest at the thought.

Having any sort of relation with someone like that- someone with that much power and who was a dark creature did not bode well.

Harry rubbed at his neck, he supposed he was also a dark creature, too, but he wasn't going to act on any sort of blood lust, at very least. Never. Nor was he going to associate with anyone that did. Simple as that.

But...

Was the man really so sure Harry would return that he gave him the free will to both leave and come back? So certain of the inevitability that, despite his freedom, the boy would find it within himself to return?

He'd given Harry this locket. He'd given him the power to leave which, even when Vernon was acting very nicely, was never an option that he'd had before. Auguste was a very calculated, paranoid and, not to mention, controlling man, would he really take that sort of risk if he wanted to toy with Harry's emotions that much?

This was how the boy's thoughts fluctuated each day, at one moment being entirely certain of himself yet at another moment questioning the veracity of his beliefs; it was dizzying and confusing. Did he trust the man or not? He was never quite sure.

It would be the safest route not to trust the vampire, and yet that option made him physically sick. He didn't know how but it was like when he was with that man, he almost felt okay. And when he was away, the aches came back.

Harry was continually shifting his priorities from safety to comfort and he wondered if, just maybe, he could visit briefly with the man and nothing would happen.

Yet he knew if he did, the more he went, the more likely it was that each time he'd be captured, or trapped, or used in ways he'd rather not think about.

Each evening he presented himself with a question, pulling the locket from out of his robes and watching the brass hinges gleam in fused light: Was it worth the risk?

Then, each evening, he'd shudder, dropping the locket back to his chest yet never moving or even thinking of taking it off, crawling in bed and trying to ignore the ache in his bones by asking inane questions like:

How many hours had it been since he'd touched the man's skin?

Or, what was the last thing he said to him?

It made him grimace and swallow thickly, trying to stifle such thoughts yet finding himself unable to.

He couldn't risk it. He couldn't see that vampire again.

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Five days. Five completely infuriating days. Five days with an innumerable amount of quills broken, five times the regular amount of pacing and loathable anticipation for the same event that continued to not happen.

Five days of sitting in the same desk, tapping fingers on the dark wood and waiting for that familiar pop; but nothing.

That boy hadn't come back.

That damn boy.

Wasn't he feeling the same effects as the man? Considering how young he was, the effects would be even more pronounced and yet, the boy evaded him! Like it was nothing more than getting rid of a pesky fly!

Incorrigible brat.

The vampire took a deep breath; he'd return. It was inevitable. The effects of whatever bond they had would necessitate close physical contact in regular intervals, as well as emotional proximity.

How unfortunate, the vampire had never planned to grow close to anybody. It horrified him to think that his well being was directly reliant on another individual.

And his whole kingdom, if the boy was the so-called Kindling.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

On the sixth day, Harry perhaps felt the most remote he'd ever felt in his life. And he couldn't tell why.

The only comparable times in his life were during the darkest, longest stretch of hours in his cupboard, at night when it was pitch black and dusty and he couldn't fall asleep in the cramped space. All he could hear was the sound of scuttling in the walls which he supposed were spiders or rats.

In Hogwarts, he had never felt this way, even in second year and mildly at the very beginning of this year-fifth year- when he had been outcasted by everyone except for his friends.

Yet now, there was an unbridgeable gap between him and everyone else, and he found it scarcely possible to make it through the day if not for the fact that he didn't have to talk to anyone during class.

He was distant from even himself; regions of his mind felt tired and stretched like a small square of butter over toast.

He was an empty shell.

He had nothing to offer anymore, not to himself, or anyone.

The day passed in a distant haze, colors seeming more dull than he had remembered them before, people he had known turning into unrecognizable blurs.

When he finally allowed himself to drop off into bed, pulling the curtains around him and either ignoring or not realizing the hushed whispers that started right as he left the common room, he pulled the locket into his hands.

He examined the hinges and the cold metal like he had often done; for the first time, he pushed on the side opposite of the hinges, watching it open with a soft, metallic clink. He blinked stupidly, he had not thought of that before.

The inside was barren of small pictures or notes and, dissatisfied, Harry almost closed it again until he noticed faded letters.

_Cecile Augustus Beliveau_

_Beloved Mother_

_1671-1980_

He swallowed the thick lump forming in his throat. That was a year before his mum died.

The engraved letters were faded and hard to make out, it was clear that the locket was old and someone had probably often stroked the words for comfort.

Her middle name- Augustus- it was...

Harry suddenly remembered something.

__

"Auguste," the man had said, "Like the emperor."

__

This was Auguste's mum.

The boy regarded the letters more reverently and sadly; why on earth would the man entrust him with something like this? Something this special?

If Harry still had his mum's photo album, he'd never hand it over to anybody. Unless...

Unless that person meant something to him.

Why hand this over to someone you were only going to hurt?

The boy thought for a long while, waiting impatiently for all of his dorm mates to go to bed, before he rose from his own and skated through the halls. Evading, somehow, both Filch and his damned cat just in time to make it to the portrait.

He had made his decision.

He needed to see Auguste.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing, SEXUAL THEEEEEMES

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

Harry clasped the cold brass tightly in his hands, staving off the late evening chill by pulling his robes tighter over himself- approximately twelve degrees Celsius, a cold wind was passing over the basin, as his mind liked to tell himself.

He breathed, feeling the rusticated edges of the hinges, and listening to the tiny mechanisms creak and groan under the weight of his thumb.

He had no idea what he'd meet when he went back there- back to Auguste- but he knew that, shivering like mad in the dead cold of Hogsmeade and aching like hell, it must be better than whatever he was feeling right now.

He didn't know if he was crazy or, somehow, staring up at the sky like looking into an infinite blank canvas, he was meant to find the words on the inside of the locket.

Either way, it was time to go.

One, two, three, "Soif."

Instantly he recognized the familiar whirling, the dizziness and terrible nausea that went hand in hand with the blurring and narrow squeezing; all of which he was, unfortunately, accustomed to.

The place on the other side of the world he was heading to opened up like a big, black massive pit- wafting up with the most recognizable of reds he had ever known- before he popped into the unidentified room and toppled on the floor from a foot up in the air.

When he opened his eyes again, only a moment later, it was when the back of his collar was being tugged forcefully upwards, sending him sprawling ineffectively the other direction, only to be pulled right back.

"You," a terrible growl that made him shudder, "You are late."

Oh, Merlin.

The man was angry with him.

A part of his mind screamed at him, hearing another growl in his ear; run. Run before you're trapped forever, he's could do anything to you-

This was it, Harry was sure. The life he had known was over and now he was trapped, the man was going to do unspeakable things to him-

He couldn't make himself move, staring ahead at the cream wall closest to him; the man was breathing on his neck from right behind him.

He could feel the man pausing, the briefest flicker of hesitation in his breathing, and that was right when his strong hand pulled on his collar again, making the boy collide into the man's chest.

Lithely and more gently than Harry could have expected, those arms wrapped around his own torso. It took him a moment to realize the constant ache which had been plaguing him was ebbing away and, against all belief, the loneliness was dissipating like grains of sand out of loose hands.

An irritated huff, "Idiot."

Harry chuckled, fingering the locket still under his thumb's grip, "Yeah."

They stayed like that for a while and, as the minutes passed on, they sunk to the plush carpet with Harry stuck in the awkward position of resting on the man's lap and placing his head against the man's chest. He didn't know if he really cared or not, especially when Auguste's casually draped arms started meticulously rubbing his back.

The elder vampire traced the boy's hairline with his own eyes, "This relationship that we have..."

Harry cringed at the word, "I wouldn't call it that."

Auguste shifted slightly, "The denotation of relationship is the dynamic between two or more individuals with an interpersonal or even a fleeting interaction between each other," he started again, more coolly, "In this case, and in the way that you personally define the term, I would say, yes, we do have a relationship. That you cannot deny."

Harry remained quiet, reddening silently and burrowing himself even more firmly into the vampire's tailored clothing.

"As I was stating; this relationship that we have," he stressed, "This relationship we have, is, certainly, undeniably- I suppose- not normal."

"What is it, then?"

Auguste switched from stroking Harry's back to lightly curling the boy's hair, taking in a nasally breath and admitting through gritted teeth, "I don't know," he said, adding quickly, "But it is to my understanding that what we do have goes deeper than a personal connection; you remember what I said the last time you were here?"

Harry remembered quite clearly, perhaps more clearly than he would've wanted-

"Harry, isn't it obvious that there is something which connects the both of us, which transcends physical boundaries?"

"Somehow, someway, we are bonded to each other."

He didn't like that word- bonded. It skeeved him out, "I don't even know who you are."

Auguste gave him a lingering look, pausing as if wondering whether or not he should say something, "If it's any consolation to you, then maybe it'd be best if I admitted that there's not anyone I know more than you."

At that admission, Harry grasped more tightly into the man, giving him a strong hug as humanly strong as possible, "I know the feeling."

He himself had been very much acquainted with knowing a broom cupboard more than an actual person.

Auguste patted him, casually shifting him back into the position they were in before, "I don't need your pity, Harry."

"More like empathy," the boy muttered to himself, not realizing that the vampire had heard and given him a particularly suspicious look. The man decided he'd tuck that information away for later.

Harry fingered the locket, feeling the brass chain links underneath his hands, and in the smallest whisper, he said, "Auguste, I can't possibly keep this."

When he heard no reply, the boy turned up to watch, watching the man's eyes narrow.

"I know what it says, inside, I mean," He looked down at the locket more reverently than before, "It's too much, it's too precious."

Auguste yet again said nothing, diverting the boy's attempts to hand him back the locket by brusquely slashing it away and finally, when Harry was unattaching it from his neck, whopping the boy's hands away and reclinking it.

At that point, seeing the man's growing irritation, he decided to keep it. For now.

They stayed like that for another hour, feeling like one solitary being, and Harry realized he felt more comfortable with the ensuing silence then he'd had with anyone ever before. It was unnerving.

It was later that Auguste had lifted himself off of the carpet, rousing the boy from half-consciousness and tugging him back up by the collar- something Harry was infinitely irritated by. He was then slinging one arm across his waist when they were both off of the floor.

"Would you like to see the rest of the castle?" the man asked.

His head perked up at the thought and he nodded eagerly, "Is anyone going to- to freak out? Like last time with the guards and everything?"

"No," he said, face darkening, "It will be fine. They will treat you with the proper deference that you deserve, being near my side."

Harry nodded, allowing himself to be led through broad corridors that stretched over his head just as tall and as infinitely as he had remembered, zipping past him for what seemed like miles more than his feet could possibly walk.

He wondered how Auguste could manage to navigate the halls, if he ever, embarrassed enough, had to ask a house elf or a servant or something like that, for directions. Harry certainly would.

Who could have so many rooms and figure out what to do with them? Just how many offices did "His Majesty" have?

Sure enough, Auguste had introduced him to rich, splendorous receiving rooms, one very broad ballroom, and a dining area with a table that was so long Harry knew without his glasses he wouldn't be able to make out the plush chair clear on the other side of the table. The dining room branched off into other, smaller 'cubiculi' as Auguste called them, and the man led him back through the corridors again- showing a private, more personal dining room, living room dotted with more tapestries and cozy chaises than Harry could count, dazzling offices and cabinet rooms, a kitchen (which, not surprisingly, made Harry wonder why there'd need to be one for a vampire), and many other off-shooting rooms. More notably, he'd been taken down to the cellars.

Through the experience in the humid room he learned that Auguste very much liked his wines, pointing out to obscure French ones like- oh, what was it?- a savin-yon blanck? He then went on into some long, rambling lecture about how important it was to use manganese-rich soil, with only a little bit of nitrogen and a dash of zinc, and how ' _one must make the grapes suffer_ ' and ' _grapes that don't swelter under the heat of the French sun, grapes that are soaked to the marrow, are weak- and they produce weak wine not worthy under any jurisdiction to be called wine in the first place_ '.

Harry wasn't really listening, yet was embarrassed to note that anytime the wavering, soft French notes hovered over the brink of Augustes' mouth, he would get a strong jolt of pleasure shooting straight to his crotch.

The man, thankfully enough, had not yet noticed, until he'd given the boy a half-lidded glance and said some saying that Harry didn't know- _"La vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin,_ "- and made the boy shiver visibly.

At that, the man instantly recognized his lust, and chose to act on it.

The two leaned into each other after that, Auguste touching his cheek and tracing kisses along his jawline, the man pushing him up against some wine cabinet or another and started murmuring the names of more wines into his ears, " _Chennin Blanc_ ,"- a playful lick- " _Riesling_ ,"- a nip along his neck-, _"Pinot Blanc_."

Harry would, reddening in a mixture of pure pleasure and the deepest of shame, try in vain to hold back a throaty groan.

The room was damp and very dark, he could scarcely make out where he began and Auguste ended, their figures like two soft palettes brushing against each other; sometimes the red glare of a wine or a brief flicker of light outlining their forms that were otherwise indistinct.

He wouldn't admit it, but he loved the humidity of it, much like how it had been with the two of them stuffed in the corner of the alley, forced against each other.

Harry rocked into the man, letting one moan froth out of his throat- the sound guttural and deeply pleasured.

Auguste brushed the collar of the boy's robe off of his shoulder, unlatching the tie and letting it drape off of his body and onto the ground; hasty, dominant hands pulling his sweater over his head, not even fumbling with the wool, eagerly rushing to the tie, and then buttons.

One by one, their tongues lashing against each other, battling or dancing or doing something that Harry concluded was terribly confusing, the man unbuttoned his shirt, sliding a coarse hand over his chest, playfully caressing his nipples and making him emit another breathy moan. And soon those lips would let go of his own-saliva dotting his face and currently puffy lips- they would stroke over his collarbone and a tongue would latch over one of his nipples much like how his hands did, ringing around the edges and undoing more buttons.

Finally, the buttons were done, and Auguste let the shirt gather to the ground much like how his robes did. The two worked to the gritty concrete, Harry shoved against his clothes dotting the floor; the man worked lower- admiring the one, big silvery button restraining the boy's aching erection under his slacks.

The man toyed with it, unable to contain his excitement, and quickly unlatched it, dropping Harry's trousers down to his knees. He eyed the plaid boxers, sliding lower down Harry who was spread out on the ground, and nipped at them with his teeth.

Sensually, Auguste slid the boxers off with his teeth, watching as the boy's length sprung out in the humid air, so hard that he could've sworn it was pulsating.

How delicious.

The man stroked at it with the back of his hand, watching Harry writhe in delight and whimper with need. He positioned his mouth directly above the head, letting a small, delicate string of saliva drip from his tongue and pool onto the boy's length.

Harry dug his fingers onto the concrete, wailing, "A-Auguste, please."

A small drop tilted over the edge of his head, drizzling down the sides and making him whimper at the barest touch.

The pink tongue flickered like a devilish snake, sneaking so close yet never touching him, teasing and nipping and much too playful for Harry's liking.

"Please-"

As soon as he started saying this, body preparing for yet another wracking groan, the door to the wine cellar rebounded open, a temperate voice exclaiming, "My Grace-"

Harry covered his parts with the clothing scattered on the ground immediately at the sound of the voice.

Auguste, on the other hand, gave out a long, drawling growl that Harry had never heard before; it was a very angry, instinctual sound that sent the boy's teeth on edge.

The voice suddenly stopped, the man- likely a servant, judging by what he was wearing- shielded his eyes and bent low to the ruddy concrete, "My Lord, I ask for your deepest, deepest apologies, I never meant to-"

Far from waving the servant away, the man's normally yellow cast eyes turned a metallic, familiar shade of oxidized blood. He closed in on Harry, wrapping protective arms around the boy's back and hoisting him upward, making sure to keep as much of his body possible covered from the eyes of the servant.

"Get out."

Harry flinched at the voice, thinking for a moment that the man was talking about the boy himself.

He cowered lower, "Mi'Lord, I would not insist it if it were not of utmost importance-"

A cold, calculating hiss, "What?"

"Attacks," the servant said simply, "Along the East barr-"

"Quiet."

The man huffed silently, unmoving for a whole minute; Harry then whispered in his ear, "It's alright, I'll just get dressed and go," there was a pregnant pause, adding, "I will be back tomorrow night, really. I promise."

Auguste looked at him, eyes still that muddy red-brown color, "You are certain? And you have the-"

"Yes, I have the locket," Harry said, pointing to the warm metal against his chest.

"Tomorrow night, then," a quick nod, and the man couldn't help but start dressing the boy until Harry started shoving away and putting on his own things.

The King exited out of the room, beckoning the servant with the twitch of a hand and coolly asking for the details, before Harry couldn't hear anything else.

The boy wondered what it was about, pulling on his shirt, buttoning quickly and inaccurately, and finally pulling on his robe until, finally, his grasped the locket in his hands as tightly as he could and said, "Soif."

HPhpHPhpHPhp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> - _La vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin_ : "life is too short for bad wine"


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I do not make money of this  
> Warning: none
> 
> *(a/n): 
> 
> Sorry! Technical Difficulties happened and this chapter was not posted.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

Two, perhaps three- that's how many times the dark creature had entered and left the school.

Dumbledore leaned back in his desk, intermittently stroking long, wrinkled fingers through his beard and adjusting his half-moon glasses higher over the bridge of his nose.

"Fawkes," he started, the bird giving him an inquisitive look, "What do you think of this?"

The bird only gave a half-hearted, confused chirp, and Dumbledore was left again to his own devices.

Just how? How could something like that transverse the wards so casually? No students had been attacked yet- not under his watch- and yet it still likely presented a very large threat. He just didn't know what yet.

The old man leaned back into his armchair, watching intently the glass orb that sat in the center of the mahogany that gleamed a bright red. It told him that the creature had just come back into the school.

Just what was it doing? Was it working for Voldemort and attempting to allow him passage into the school? Such a thought was- he didn't care to admit to himself- utterly terrifying.

And the question remained- how? The thought was a heavy, calcified weight that sat in the base of his head; how could a dark creature make it's way into the school, so simply? What secret- what loophole- was it using to get through the wards?

Dumbledore lifted himself to his feet, choosing instead to shake off the terrible feeling in his chest by pacing through his office; his actions mustn't be too preemptive, the consequences of that were innumerable.

However, if he didn't take action soon and precisely then the students would become too comfortable. The students had waited long enough without seeing any direct effect to their own, and they were already drifting back to their regular recklessness.

It made the situation much more delicate.

He had to choke out the threat as soon as he possibly could, as carefully as he possibly could, and yet caution and hastiness were not two factors that often coincided.

He was attracted yet again to the gleam of the orb on his desk, watching it brighten like an ominous red sunrise.

"Fawkes," he said, startling the bird with the gravity of his voice, "I need you to call all of the teachers into my office, aside from, of course, Professor Umbridge."

He chirped in reply, disappearing in a blur of fire and smoke, and Dumbledore leaned against the surface of his desk for several minutes until the professors started appearing one by one from the fireplace.

When all of them had entered, the green haze cast by the fireplace vanished, and the flames turned their familiar bright red.

Snape was the first to speak, giving him a silently displeased look, "What is it, Headmaster?"

Dumbledore inhaled slowly, shifting, "The dark creature has been entering and disappearing from the school-"

"What? How many times?" McGonagall spoke.

"Two, perhaps three."

"And what of the prefects? How are they safe?"

Dumbledore gave her a long look, "It leaves late in the evening, after all the prefects have gone to bed; I would even theorize it does this strategically so no one can catch it- whatever it is-"

Sprout fiddled nervously with her hands, "What is it doing? Where is it?"

"We have no way of knowing; there's no precise mechanism that could lead us to the creature, it's much like how the ministry's trace operates over underage wizards because, in large populations, there's no way to tell who was casting magic, and in this case, there's no way to tell where it is exactly or even what it's doing."

Flitwick piped in, his voice hopeful, "There have been no attacks, Headmaster, how can we even conclude that it's dangerous-"

Dumbledore sagged, "There is no other conclusion we can make on its behalf; could something harmless, with no strong intent to enter the school, really bypass the wards?"

"We've already strengthened the wards, they're-"

Snape snapped at the smaller professor, glowering down at him, "Yes, well they don't appear to be working too well, do they?"

"Severus," the elder man warned, making the potions' professor step down hesitantly, and then addressing the entire room, "Besides, there is only one option we have at the moment."

Nobody said anything to this.

"This castle will be put on strict night watch, but we must- I repeat, must- be careful not to be too noticeable, otherwise it may take note and act accordingly or worse, lash out. This is the best chance we have to capture the creature."

"And what does this entail?" Snape questioned.

"Everyone takes turns staying up and watching the corridors; shifts, I suppose you'd call them," Dumbledore said, running fingers through his beard, "I will alert the Order and they will help too."

"And the ministry?"

"They shouldn't know that the situation has gotten to such a degree, elsewise they may further their own idea that the school is unfit to protect its' students; be cautious of Professor Umbridge, in other words."

There was a collective nod around the room, the professors tiredly rubbing at their faces.

Dumbledore looked over them, Fawkes hopping onto his shoulder and butting against the side of his head, "Remember- we don't know its intent or how it's entering the school, much less how much of a danger it presents- this situation must be engaged with mindfulness."

The professors soon disappeared back to their respective quarters, leaving the bird and the Headmaster alone again.

The orb on his desk still gleamed that terrible red, making him take a silent, shuddering breath of air; he'd do what he could to rid the school of the threat. No matter what it would take, no matter what the means were.

If that included taking his supply of Aurors away from Order duties, he supposed it would have to be a temporary sacrifice until he could find the creature.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing,

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhp

Harry found himself unable to fall back asleep after he had returned, instead opting to lie in the dormitory and stare aimlessly up at the stone wall above his four-poster bed. He sure was that, come morning time, he'd be appropriately exhausted and the embarrassment would've taken its time to fully sink in.

Embarrassment about, well, about actions he'd rather not have participated in, he realized a full hour after it had happened. At the time he'd been rather cool-headed about it but now, sheathed in darkness and only having the sound of snoring from the other beds greeting him, he'd had a while to think about it.

He felt like a melting pot with a number of different feelings coming to him- it was a strange and rather unpleasant amalgam of shame, confusion, regret, and a vague hangover of lustiness that he absolutely refused to "take care of", even though he did admittedly have the time and, not admittedly, a large part of himself asked why it would matter.

Harry curled his arms around his own waist, squeezing into his own sides with a reddening face; he'd acted like a cheap whore- a few choice words that he couldn't help but imagine his uncle saying to him. It's true that maybe he had been manipulated, perhaps just slightly, but still it was with a guy.

And he didn't like guys, he liked girls! Sweet Merlin, he wasn't- at least he didn't think of himself as, well, gay.

He liked girls, girls, girls! Hadn't Ron and him been talking about how Hermione's skin looked nice a while back? Well, not Harry himself, since that girl was like a sister to him, afterall.

Even more than that, he'd had a crush on Cho once. Cho was most definitely a girl. He never thought about her beyond a kiss, but still!

The boy nibbled on his lower lip- maybe it was just this one man. Just this once. He only felt an attraction to one man, and one man didn't constitute a person's whole sexual basis for the rest of their lives!

He stared up at the imposing, rusticated stone walls a few feet above his head, as if to ask them for answers.

It's not as if being gay was particularly bad, but it was definitely something that he couldn't see himself as; not really. Not at all.

His mind was quelled for only a few moments before leaping back into action and accusing him, as per usual, for what he had done wrong. More specifically, what he had let Auguste do to him.

His face grew an even deeper shade of red, making him dig his palms into his eyes squeezed shut- trying, in vain, to get rid of the images. And even worse than that was the memory of the servant walking in on them- on him- in that position!

The embarrassment grew unbearably stifling, making him wish that the floor would swallow him up, or he could just get some damned sleep so he wouldn't have to think about it any longer.

This, unfortunately, was not the case and he was confined to wallow in self pity for the whole night, unmoving aside from the brief flits of turning over to find the elusive side that could get him to sleep.

He would quickly learn there was no such side, and that soon it would be more than just embarrassing thoughts keeping him up at night.

In the morning, he was awoken from a semi-unconscious, wavering-on-dreamy phase by Ron, who saw it fit to tear open the curtains surrounding his bed and shove his shoulder, shouting, "Breakfast is almost over! We're gonna be late, mate!"

That made Harry lift his head, giving the redhead a gloomy look.

Ron only gave him a nervous chuckle, "You look horrible."

"Thanks," he had grumbled, getting up and sifting through robes he wanted to wear.

He threw another glare at the other boy when Ron only continued to give him an inquisitive look, "Did you really fall asleep in those?"

Harry remembered with a start that he'd never changed out of his school robes, "Uh..."

"You left the dorm last night, didn't you?" Ron questioned, his words followed with a terse silence and a terrible feeling in Harry's gut, "Blimey! Without me? You could'a gotten me up!"

Ron inspected him more closely, arms crossed, "Looks like you got caught in a tornado."

Harry looked back down at his shirt that was missing buttons and with others that were misplaced- he really had been in a rush to leave the palace, he remembered with a ruddy blush.

"Wait a second, I think I know what's going on," the other boy said, circumventing him with narrowed eyes, "Leaving the dorm at odd hours, returning who-knows-when; it all makes so much sense. How could I not see it before?"

Harry felt his stomach flip.

Oh, Merlin. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

Ron gave him a wide smirk, with an oddly approving gleam in his eyes, "You got a girlfriend, didn't you? That's why you've been sneaking away."

Harry found the statement so ironic and relieving that he couldn't even process it in time to reply.

"It's all over your face!" the boy laughed, pacing madly, "Who is she? Oh, I can't wait to tell Hermione- what're Fred and George going to say? Oh man, your very own girlfriend! So that's why you've been spending so much time with the mirror- pro'lly applying glamours- so you'll look good for your girl?"

"How did you know that?" Harry asked before he could keep his mouth shut.

"These stones are parchment-thin! I can hear you casting them all bloody morning like an alarm," he said, as if it were obvious, adding, "You gotta tell me who she is!"

"I hate to ruin your, uh- burst your bubble, but I don't have a girlfriend," Harry said, almost laughing in relief.

The boy rolled his eyes, "Merlin's beard, get dressed and let's get to the Great Hall so I can tell everybody!" he said, "You've probably been snogging her senseless, am I right? Is she not in Gryffindor?"

Harry ignored him, heading to the bathroom and throwing on his clothes, still hearing Ron chatter about one thing or another that he wasn't really paying attention to until he left the room. His friend then proceeded to grab his arm, pulling him along and asking him more inane questions.

"Well, if she ain't a Gryff, than at very least she's in Hufflepuff, definitely not a Ravenclaw- that'd be like Hermione but worse," he paused, shock and horror dawning on his face as he looked back at Harry, "Please say she isn't in Slytherin!"

Harry rolled his eyes, "No."

On and on it went, until he sat down in the Great Hall and started loading his plate with food he wasn't going to eat, which then caused Fred and George to take the seats on either side of him.

"Did I just hear someone say 'girlfriend'?" Fred started, giving George an exaggerated and shocked look.

"Why, I think so, my dear brother!"

Fred shook his head, "Confound it!"

The other twin whispered something in Harry's ear along the lines of, "Who is this foxy little minx of yours, you devilish charmer?"

Hermione leaned in, interrupting the chattering with an ahem, "Obviously, it's not that big of deal! Harry probably doesn't want anyone to know about it-"

George and Fred continued to give him interrogative looks, as ruthless as Aurors questioning a captive death eater, and it was only when people started leaving the Great Hall that they were forced to make it to their first class.

As he left, he barely noticed the pouting girls that were crossing their arms on his table, flashing indignant and suspicious looks to their fellow female students.

The day passed in a similar blur that his morning had started on, leaving him ready to scream bloody murder by the end of the day. His friends would ask him incessant questions and he was forced to throw them small lies just to get them to stop, dropping little hints that didn't exist about how the supposed mystery girl was in Hufflepuff, had mousy brown hair and was, apparently, very adept under the sheets.

This had the opposite effect from what he'd intended, making Ron, Neville, Seamus, Dean, and even once Hermione (who was forced to by her naturally curious nature), beg him for more clues.

Now that he thought about it, one of the Patil sisters had emerged from a giggling, shy group of girls and had asked him a question along the lines of what he found to be a good trait in a girl.

Harry, not knowing how to answer, scratched the back of his head, and said, "A big heart."

This, unbeknownst to him, caused the group standing on the opposite side of the common room to giggle even more flirtatiously. He could make out some words from the quick whispers, a few of them including, "so cute!", "how adorable", "I wish he was my boyfrie-"

All of it left him reeling. In short, he'd never known how much influence he had over that particular sector of the population.

Unable to escape the questions, he found himself sneaking away from his friends and anyone else who crossed his path by trailing like a lost puppy through empty corridors.

To think, it had all started because he'd been too sloppy with putting his robes back on.

The more he traversed up the castle, the more deeply he found himself thinking, rubbing at his aching temples and not noticing another person until he bumped into them.

He stepped back, apologizing profusely, "Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Until he realized, with an uncertain blink, who it was, "Remus!"

He gave the man a tight hug, the werewolf patting him on the back affectionately, "Harry, how've you been?"

"Just brilliant," the boy said, saturating the words with a sarcastic voice, "I suppose you've heard?"

Remus pushed a hand through his graying hair, "About what?"

The boy waved it off, "Never mind it," he said, adding in a hopeful voice, daydreaming that the man was kicking out Umbridge and taking over the Defense classes this year, "What is it that you're doing here?"

Remus leaned in, throwing a suspicious look in both directions, "You've heard about the dark creature in Hogwarts, right?"

Harry gave a nod, realizing with a start that he'd almost forgotten that in all the activity.

"I suppose I should tell you this purely for your safety," Remus said, as if justifying something to himself, "I just got out of a meeting with the Headmaster."

The boy neglected to say anything, a bad feeling spreading within him like algae.

"Well, word is that the creature's been entering and leaving the school at night sometimes," Remus whispered in a conspiratorial manner, "The Headmaster has no idea how, but of course the wards don't lie; he needs us Order members to watch over the school at night and protect the students, maybe even catch it."

The man continued to string some narrative along the lines of him letting the adults handle it, but Harry didn't listen- nor could he listen- over the terrible, deafening ring in his ears.

He scarcely recognized the expanding dots of black over his vision and the accompanying dizziness, as well as the horrible, familiar confusion that leached like a beleaguered phantom over him- spreading out from the center of his lungs and slickening his gut in dread that almost sent him tumbling down a flight of stairs if it were not for Remus' hand clawing at his wrist and making the boy lurch forward into his arms and into unconsciousness.

When he finally awoke on the ground and looked up at a very concerned Remus, he'd realized with chuckles that threatened to turn into hysterical, wrenching sobs, that he'd only passed out because he forgot to breathe.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this  
> Warnings: swearing

HPhpHPhpHPhpHP

"Harry!"

The boy felt what he could only describe as emerging out from an abyss, staring up at the world around him as if he hadn't ever truly looked at it before.

Remus shifted into his vision, the man's head wavering above his line of sight and only making the boy even more confused than he already was.

His mind couldn't piece together what had happened.

However, when he considered the feeling of cold tile radiating out from the stones and over his back, he had immediately recalled the pressing confusion and dizziness that had plagued him only moments before- realizing, with scrunched brows, that he had passed out.

That was precisely when the laughter had started, at first only a brief flit in his chest but then becoming full blown chuckles that made his ribs ache fiercely.

He had forgotten to breathe; Merlin!

He didn't even know why he found it so hilarious, more funny than anything he'd ever thought before, but it was. How awfully and wickedly funny.

The boy had faced Voldemort on numerous occasions, been held under Imperio, Crucio, and various other dark spells, but it was this- forgetting how to do the most basic, instinctual thing he'd ever done- that sent him into unconsciousness.

"Are you okay?"

The concern in the man's voice just made the boy laugh harder, his sides pivoting up and down with gasps of air.

Remus gave him an odd look, examining him as if he'd gone bonkers, "Have you hit your head?"

His laughter grew high pitched, a deep, wrenching breath of trembling air making tears well in his eyes. He couldn't help it, he couldn't help the way he'd desperately huffed, the way his lungs felt the need to gasp frantically for air, and how his splitting sides trembled profusely.

He couldn't control how the feeling got to him- how the dizziness and confusion, coupled with the pain in his head and chest and sides, had made him tear up.

The ground was cold and hard and uncompromising, and he couldn't bare to watch the flickering concern in Remus' eyes; he was an abandoned child again, and he couldn't control it.

There was the frantic scrambling of some great and terrible sadness in his chest, and fear cast like a slithering snake crawled up his spine.

"Harry, please, are you-"

The boy covered his face with his hands, grasping at his hair and pulling hard, "No," he said, his voice sounding like the breaking strings of a harp, "I'm not okay, I'm not bloody okay."

Remus could only blink down at him, helping him into a sitting position against the corridor wall that, thankfully, was empty besides the two of them.

Remus stood, looking out of the corridor and opening his mouth with more than a small amount of confliction, "I should get Madam Pomfrey."

"Wait," Harry said, tugging on his godfather's robes when he started to move away.

Remus gave him an expectant, even more concerned look, waiting for him to speak.

"What was it like," Harry started, struggling to find the words, "What was it like when you first became a werewolf?"

There was a deep shadow that passed over his face and the man instantly crouched down to the boy's level, giving him a harrowing look, "Harry, did someone hurt you?"

He said nothing to this.

The man grew more insistent, his face looking the consistency of oatmeal as he clutched onto the boy's arms, "Answer me."

Harry wiped at his damp face, "I'm not a werewolf."

Remus could only swallow, looking visibly relieved, "You're not acting like yourself."

"There's something I should tell you," the boy said, using the wall to help himself up back onto his feet, "But I don't know how you'll take it."

Harry faced the wall, finding himself unable to turn around and look at his godfather.

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

"Something's happened to me," the boy said, "I'm not-"

"You're not..."

He pressed the top of his head against the wall, wondering what he thought he was doing when his senses started returning to him.

"Lupin!"

A scratchy voice and the clunk of a cane on the ground made him turn around, both him and Remus staring at a very annoyed Alastor Moody.

The cane stamped on the ground again, the man tousling with his coat and a spindly eye rotating off of its normal axis, "We've got work to do."

Remus looked back at Harry, causing the other man's eyes to lock on him.

The spindly one seemed to bulge, a bright, slightly scuffed blue iris sending him a piercing look. It was a look that had seen too far, a look that set Harry on edge.

He quickly yet just barely managed to stifle the inhuman growl that was about to rise out of his throat, feeling his canines start to protrude past their normal length and grow sharper edges.

His brain booted into action; it was twenty degrees celsius in the castle, twelve degrees celsius outdoors, a wind from the north was blowing in over the basin, an inversion would likely cause the entrapment of air around the vicinity of the castle which was approximately a three-mile radius until the inner wards were met. There were roughly one thousand and two-hundred fifty occupants within the castle with fifteen casual visitors- the Order.

The fifteen Order members were clustered into three different groups, consisting of one group within the Headmaster's office, another a staircase lower than himself, and then finally Lupin and Moody, with him. His senses could not identify who exactly they were or their future movements beyond that.

As soon as he noticed the changes occurring as well as the pattern of his thoughts, they had stopped; it was strange, he'd never had such a reaction to another person before.

Some part of himself felt threatened by Moody and his magical eye.

Their exchanged looks continued on for another few seconds until the imposing yet stout man cajoled Remus further, as if nothing had happened, "Well, let's get a move on, Lupin."

"This discussion is not over," Lupin said, eyeing Harry, "I should be taking you to the Hospital Wing right now."

Moody said nothing to this, the scars lining his brow puffing up more than usual when his face had scrunched up.

Harry had to think fast, scrubbing at his teary face, "You're busy though, right? Hannah," he started, faltering only briefly, "Hannah Abbott has extra lessons on this floor- only a couple rooms over- I can get her to take me, to make sure I don't pass out again and kill myself on some stairs."

His godfather sighed, "All right, I suppose so," he scratched the back of his head, "We are going to talk about what you wanted to say to me."

Harry nodded, dismissing the pair who wheeled around and started trekking up the stairs; the boy only moved when he was assured he could see them no longer.

In an effort to get away from trouble, he'd created more of it for himself. Passing out, then freaking out, almost exposing what he was- Remus must think he was an absolute nutter.

Maybe he was; afterall, Hogwarts felt awfully similar to an insane asylum.

And now he was trapped, not only in the castle but also with himself.

He was trapped with his own looming volatility, trapped with a bite on his neck now recessed under a fine layer of scarring- a bite that often sent pounding through his body and most notably to his teeth.

Hogwarts was not safe, but this time it wasn't because of a possessed professor, a giant snake, an escaped convict, or even a resurrected Voldemort- it was because of himself.


End file.
